Any love for the Gentalex Gold Lion 12ax7 gold pin?

I have four Gold Lion 12ax7 gold pins in storage, they were the first I switched to over the stock tubes in my phono pre. A nice upgrade, for the money, but as @noromance inferred, I then replaced those with four old Telefunken smooth plates, and albeit being similar in tone, the Tele's were much smoother and really superior in all ways. After that I tried two 60's Blackburn Mullard's in combination with two of the Telefunken smooth plates, and liked that combo even more, in my setup.

All that said, yes, for the money, the Gold Lions are very good, but can be easily beat my venerable older tubes. But they will cost significantly more....but in terms of  'return on investment', an easy justification for me.

The JJ E83CC/12AX7 frame grid is my favorite current production 12AX7 at about half the price of the Gold Lion. A number of other folks have said the same. The Gold Lion is okay but not great and overpriced for what you get IMHO.

JJ E83CC/12AX7

The new tubes are very good and unless you have a large tube collection from which to conduct endless trials, it’s usually more about proper sonic pairing than raw sound quality IMO. Telefunken ribbed plates can be bright, but the smooth plate variant is warmer - check which you have. The Russian "re-issues" are good to mix & match in 3 variants:

Tung-Sol - little extra energy up top
Gold Lion - just a touch of sweetness
Mullard - warm

Reissue Gold Lions are really quite nice as you’ve found, and their well tempered musical balance makes them a good "first guess" fit for most systems.

The best NOS tubes are more articulate with more 3D image, but if you don’t get the right sonic match then it doesn’t matter, as you’ve found out.

If you like re-issue Gold Lions you might like Amperex Holland, or black plate RCA (which you already mentioned), or even Tele smooth plates. The reissue Mullards and Tung-Sols track (somewhat) with their namesake vintage 12AX7. British Mullards are very warm.

I usually prefer Tele ribbed over smooth plates, incidentally, but you do have to deal with the brightness. If you can, I find them to be more detailed and dynamic. Mazda silver plates take this even further. Mazda silver with a Koetsu cartridge can be divine 😍

One brand I regret not exploring more in the 12AX7 space - Siemens. Their E88CC ended up being my favorite in the 6922 type, of MANY variants. They combine air & energy up top, sweet natural mids (bordering on lush) with top grade bass & dynamics. All while remaining super clean with top clarity. Almost seems impossible to pull off. 

Gold Lions are generally good if upgrading from Mullard current production tubes.

In my system Mullard < Gold Lions << Psvanes <<<<< NOS Mazda (1960s). But this is only for 12AU7 tubes. I don't have experience with any other tubes.

After spending a couple days with the Gold Lion started noticing soundstage was more focused in the center. Put RCA’s in and soundstage went beyond speaker boundaries and that’s no warm up, maybe I posted to soon. I still like them but better than RCA’s maybe not. Will compare to other tubes. I might have been wrong on this one.