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Has anyone directly compared Vintage Tung-Sol 12AX7 Made in USA, to the new production Tung-Sol 12AX7? Any major sonic differences?The way I understand it, the vintage Tung-Sol 12AX7 Made in USA is one of the best US 12AX7 ever made, very dynamic and musical with superb tonal balance, better overall than RCA. Does this still hold true with most of you guys?
I'm thinking of replacing my 12AX7 stock tubes in my AESTHETIX Calypso preamp with vintage Tung-Sol 12AX7s Made in USA.
Follow Ups:
I directly compared the old American long grey plate with rectangular holes Tung Sols with the new Russian ones in a thread a little while ago. The old Tung Sols are my favorite 12ax7 I have used so far in my VTL TL5.5. The new ones were very good but I still liked the old ones better.
Cheers,
Jim
While the new power tubes have come a long way in matching and many times passing the vintage tubes in sound,the peanut tubes still are off the mark a bit..My favorite are the telefunken 12ax7a whether they they smooth or ribbed plate and the RCA black plates from the 50s.I also like the GEs and the 5751s...To be honest you can buy nos vintage 12xa7s pretty reasonable on ebay or at least strong testing ones for not much money.I think its worth the difference and being preamp tubes arent run very hard,they stay strong a long time.
NO. There was some "shootout" where the TungSol was praised WAY beyond what it deserves-- it's a nice 12AX7, but the longplate RCAs WASTE them. Besides, I have had many TungSol 12AX7s in the past, and the early blackplates often seemed to be made by other tube companies FOR TungSol. This is only an opinion based on extensive listening to the TungSols and comparing them extensively--sonically and visually-- to the 2-3 companies I think made some early TungSols, but several "old timers" (Ham guys and 1970s-2006 tube-o-philes)say the same thing, that TungSol DID make 12AX7, but ften sourced from Sylvania and Raytheon. I had several that were indistinguishable sonically from blackplate Sylvanias. I KNOW I KNOW you can't judge by looks, but I judged by sonics, and backed that up with observations that the internals of the TungSols, from the micas, getter and many other cues looked dead on like the Sylvanias and Raytheons (Oh boy, I can see the flames coming to rip me apart on this post already!) Later greyplate/longplate TungSols, IMHO are a mediocre tube and their short plate version is not worth bothering with. The long greyplates sound like GE longplate to me (and not the rare version GE). Whether I am right or wrong on the above, I stand by my sonic observations-- TungSols are WAY overrated and overpriced, many TungSol 12AX7s sound like Raytheons; bright and a bit thin in the mids. Others sound like Sylvanias, but are priced way too high. Go with RCAs, shortplate/copper gridpost Mullards, Dutch Amperex, or early Siemens. 1970s Tungsrams are nice too-- check out www.tubemonger.com for their seletion of 12AX7s. They are an asylum sponsor, and have great 12AX7s.
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