Linlai E 6sn7 tubes

Just wait till they burn in!!! 

Just received a pair of the Linlai E-6SN7 tubes and have had them installed in a Dennis Had Inspire headphone amp playing a cd on repeat for 10 hours, settled in and listened to 5 albums. These are really good already and am looking forward to getting them burnt in. These are replacing Shuguang WE 6SN7 replicas that I had 2 pairs of, here's where this gets interesting, 1 pair sourced through Grant fidelity and 1 pair sourced from a Chinese seller on e bay that I have delt with before to purchase Psvane and Shuguang tubes and I could not tell the difference after both pair were played in, WTS both pair showed fault around 350 hours as they would arc around the base and really buzz for about 8 to 10 seconds when turned on (1 tube from each pair) after the initial 10 seconds buzz went away they sound fine, just afraid to use them any more. Also the Grant Fidelity tube is a few MM taller.

The arcing is definitely concerning.  Do you have another amp to verify that problem so you can say it is the amp or the tube?  Regardless, I would contact Dennis Had (or however you purchased) for advice.   Assuming it has a soft start feature, the current behaviour seems contrary to intended design.  I hope you can get this resolved easilly!

Thank you for your impressions on the two suppliers.  With a complete lack of stated selection parameters it is difficult to decide what/if there are differences.  Even if there are differences, we have no credible research data that those differences correlate to sound quality, reliability, length of time in which sound quality is comparable to the 100 hr mark, and so on.  Tubes are gonna fail when they want to, NOS included.  I had 1 fail at @150 hours, Viva Tubes had a matched replacement at my door in 4 days, cross country.  Dealing with out of country can be more complicated and expensive.  I don't think there is anything wrong with deciding what kind of buying experience we want to have.  Recently I bought a oem replacement light for my car from Latvia as those things are tough.  Tubes are fragile, for me Im fine paying for Stateside screening and rapid replacement.  YMMV!

I have a full set of 6 Linlai HiFi black plates on my Cary SLP-05. Enjoying them a lot, but will do impressions and comparison later when I buy a full 6 of the E-6SN7s.

I sourced my Linlai elete 6SL7 tubes from a Chinese seller and have had no problems for over 13,000 hours now.

@tooblue   there is a post in this thread closer to the beginning where the person had a buzzy tube on startup.  The advice relayed was from Brent Jessen who has a procedure to try to resolve a similar problem. Orient a certain way, tap the tube gently on a hard surface 3 times, try in amp again.  Food for thought...