Tube Selection

[jckid649]

What choice what you make as far as brand of tubes to use in an Express build?

[prspastor]

I'd say for EL 34s, if you can't go NOS (Siemens I think), then your best bet would probably be Winged C tubes =C=. My opinion only though.

I certainly would spring for a NOS treasure for V1 - the amp is pretty sensitive to what is in V1. FWIW, I've got a NOS 5751 in my V1.

[garlin]

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[jckid649]

eBay has a bunch of Telefunken tubes. Some of them say RFT and they claim this is the company that made the tubes for Telefunken, Siemens and others. Is there any validity to this and do any of these tubes look like they are real deal Telefunken's?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/2x-MATCHED-TUBE ... 4845d469fe

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=tel ... &_osacat=0

[jckid649]

Apparently Telefunken is still in business making tubes. Has anyone tried these?

http://www.telefunken-elektroakustik.co ... /el-34.php

[overtone]

These tubes you are linking to are all RFT made in East Germany at the time of the Cold War.
The original TFK EL34 was quite different, I finally tracked down a matched pair a couple of months back.

Here is why you will see RFT EL34 tubes with all sorts of brand names printed on them.
When the companies in the West stopped tube production, they sourced East German tubes in a round-about way and had them re-branded.
This was so that they could fulfill their remaining contracts, some of those being NATO. So you had NATO using tubes made by the Warsaw Pact.
I was first told this by a friend of mine who was in the German Navy and did not believe him, not until I got some TFK branded RFTs with the German war department eagle on them.
He talked about 1980's Marine battery-gun-controls still being tube based. Every six months they had to test the big guns, after which all the tubes had to be replaced.

The good news is the old RFT EL34 is a great tube. It is up to you whether you want to pay more just to have the word Siemens or TFK on them. To me they are the same.
There is a school of thought that only the best went to the West, but can you be sure it wasn't the other way around?

Best,
tony

[jckid649]

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[jckid649]

Would you vary the tubes you use in the preamp circuit or would you go "all" Telefunken if you can have them throughout the amp (12AX7's and EL34's)?

[Colossal]

Would you vary the tubes you use in the preamp circuit or would you go "all" Telefunken if you can have them throughout the amp (12AX7's and EL34's)?

I would base your decision on what sounds good to you and very importantly, what sounds best and is quiet in the all-critical V1 position. Glen K (geetarpicker), our resident Trainwreck ambassador, lauds GT EL34s so while NOS can be the holy grail, there's some great tone to be had at less fiscally distressing prices. I play my amps hard and don't baby them. They are set up for high performance and as such I try to voice them around new production tubes as I want to be able to reproduce the tone I have come to love if I smoke a tube and have to replace it. Unless you have both deep pockets and a rich supply of NOS, a tone may be fleeting once a tube has lost its luster. Of course, if your amp is a showpiece and only sees periodic playing then it may make sense to tube it exclusively with NOS and all-Telefunken would certainly be a mark of pedigree and great tone.

That said, I am building a tribute Express and Liverpool over the winter and plan to use some NOS But for loud and proud daily blaring of my amps, I use selected new production tubes.