Rays Tubes

Interesting, and they're based in Oakland.

Sounds very much like the Wathen Cryotone tubes, without the cryo. They start with chinese tubes and screen out the best ones. You get a good new production tube at a new old stock price. 

apos ray is a brand of chinese tubes. they refuse to disclose the manufacture. if u want to pay  $60-80 for a $25 12AU7, apos ray is your brand. 

a lot of tube heads familiar with chinese boutique tubes have pointed out how the some of these appear identical to psvane. 

they recently finished a huge youtube media blitz where all the youtube tastemakers read off the same script, something about "tired of paying for NOS" or something. funny since apos ray are more expensive than most old stock tubes. but that was the script.  

the also came crashin thru head-fi like the kool-aid man. 



 

I'll stick with my nos tubes...

I’ve compared the Ray 12AU7s against two NOS brands recommended by Brent Jessee and against the Cryotones.

 Prefer the Rays in my Elekit 300B amp.

@dougthebiker ,

What were the brands?

Telefunken smoothplate and Belvu Mazda grayplate 1964

Wow, quality good tubes and not cheap.

Anyone with $$ resources can private label a MIC generic tube.

Have it stamped with your own label and "exclusive testing/select" marketing  BS and we audiophools will open our wallets.

Still gonna stick with my nos tubes.

Trust your ears.

Yep NOS all day every day. 

Man I'm having trouble getting a grip on all these Chinese tube and the good reviews.  I'm an NOS kinda guy!

My experience with Chi tubes was from back around 2000 and I never went back.

Now you got PSvane, Linlai, etc all getting some love.

I just got me some Northern Electrics.

Maybe time to try them?  Maybe I'm missing something?

Any 6FQ7 or 12FQ7 (depending upon the available filament voltage) will out perform any 12AU7, and they’re cheap.

Are they interchangeable?

I really like their pizzas.

The carpathian, yes, 12AU7 and 6 or 12v FQ7 are interchangeable, but you have to choose the version of FQ7 that matches the available filament voltage. Same specs for all other parameters, more or less.

Man, it is hard to keep up with all these variants and compatibilities...

A day doesn’t go by where I don’t see an ad for the tubes or the equipment they sell. I also tried to find out where their stuff was made and nobody will say for sure.  Though they are very generous.  You can get 5% off your first order!

Carpathian, it’s really not that hard to understand the differences among tubes, if you read some basic texts on the subject. Of course before substituting one type for another you need to understand how to read the data sheets.

The nerd in me finds vacuum tubes fascinating, one of the most modern world changing inventions.

I’ve never really thought about delving into the metaphorical nuts and bolts of them, but I think you just kick started me in that direction.

These are fantastic tubes. I use them in my BHK preamp (and in my recently sold Primaluna Dialogue Premiums run as monoblocks).

I have a large stash of NOS 12AU7s--Brimars, Teles, Radiotechnique, Cifte, Mullards and new production Gold Lions. 

The Apos RAY 12AU7s outperform them all, and come with a warranty and a trial period.

I have no affiliation or financial interest here.

These are the real deal and I'm about to begin selling off my very low hour NOS 12AU7 stash.

They are just that good...

andynotadam and dougthebiker, very interesting testimony. These are the same price as current Gold Lion 12au7, ‘Kevin’s stash’ (Upscale Audio’s highest grade). I am tempted to give them a try next time I buy. I had never heard of these before this thread. What is most significant to me is the possibility that current production may be gaining ground on equaling the quality of revered products of the past. Hopefully these quality gains become more common among manufacturers and lessens the impact of the increasing scarcity of true NOS. For me, perceived quality and price/scarcity issues have severely dampened my desire to acquire more tube gear.

I don’t have a lot of experience rolling tubes, but I recently replaced a pair of NOS 12au7’s (BugleBoys) with PSVane Horizon’s in my Backert Labs preamp. I am very pleased with the results.

A buddy of mine swore by these things when he got them. I brought up some NOS and premium current manufactured ones to compare. The 6sn7’s were beaten handily by in all cases by the Dawning series Shuguang, the Elite series Linlai, and Sylvania and RCA NOS. The Rays just sound very lean with weak bass and a bit harsh on the upper end. He also had a 12au / 12ax combination in an amp and they were destroyed by Telefunken and Siemens NOS. These are just re-branded standard issue tubes. The rest is just hype. If you listen to all the YouTube reviews the script is practically the same for all the reviewers.

In many cases, in phono stages, 12AU7 is used at the output, as a cathode follower. The CF is needed to reduce output impedance, so the stage can drive a linestage or amplifier. The CF adds no voltage gain, so the choice of brand or provenance is relatively inconsequential. Same applies to an amplifier where a 12AU7 may be used as a phase splitter. In a linestage, 12AU7 may add signal gain, and there it may pay to use a select tube. But just remember that tubes age and over time that wonderfulness you think you hear may fade. Real Amperex Bugleboys are the best 12AU7s I’ve heard, but 12 or 6FQ7s were better.

Amperex 7316's for me. 

with PSVane Horizon’s in my Backert Labs preamp. I am very pleased with the results.

@markmuse +1.

My Mazdas sound a bit more fuller. But someone can attribute that as "warm" compared to the Psvane Horizons, which have a tighter bass.

@milpai  I have the Mazda's too, but haven't tried them in the Backert. Thanks for the info. 

Just found this discussion. I have a Mac MA352 I’ve been waiting for them to finish building and have read at least one person here with a big improvement replacing stock 12AT7 & 12AX7 with PSVANEs. Chinese tubes on Amazon at $50/pair, matched. They look a lot like the Ray Tubes which are 4-5x that. Anyone know anything about this, and I’d also like to know where Macintosh gets their rebranded tubes.

My Atmasphere monoblocks originally used 12AT7s as input tubes, which means they were responsible for most of the voltage gain across the whole circuit. At that time, I purchased a wide variety of different brands of 12AT7, to determine which sounded the best. The first finding is that it made a considerable difference; different 12AT7s sounded different. The surprising finding is that a Chinese variant sounded the best.  In those days, there was a tube vendor operating in the UK called "Billington". Their top of the line 12AT7 was called "Billington Gold", made in China.  I compared it to Mullard, GE, Sylvania, and some other NOS types. Billington Gold were the best sounding by far. The bad news is that they had a short life span in the amplifier circuit.  This saga played out in the late 90s or early 2000s. I think Billington the vendor is no more.

Whoops! I just googled Billington out of my own curiosity.  To my surprise, the business is still in operation. I don't know whether their Chinese made 12AT7 (which went by another alphanumeric designation, as I recall) is still available.