I'm boycotting and protesting the AA Tube Asylum for archaic formatting! Also, I prefer this brain trust anyway.
I had a conversation about 12ax7s with a dude at "thetubestore" and he thinks the Lions are a nice but more classic sounding tube (i.e. "mellower"), and the "preferred" 7025s they sell (they sell both so there's no incentive to sell me cheaper tubes) are cleaner. I am not in the market for old tubes at the moment since it seems that there are some great new tubes that unlike the "vintage tube" market, haven't been passed around by collectors, or tested on sketchy machines by sketchy testors after being yanked out of some hapless dusty old radio to be sold for big bucks with no warranty with bent rusty pins and smeared printing. I just read a review of the new ARC Reference 150 using KT120s and I have yet to hear anybody dislike that tube in any meaningful way, and it's about as new as it gets. Also, the ARC Ref is about 9 times the cost of my Jolida so I feel thrifty.
I had a conversation about 12ax7s with a dude at "thetubestore" and he thinks the Lions are a nice but more classic sounding tube (i.e. "mellower"), and the "preferred" 7025s they sell (they sell both so there's no incentive to sell me cheaper tubes) are cleaner. I am not in the market for old tubes at the moment since it seems that there are some great new tubes that unlike the "vintage tube" market, haven't been passed around by collectors, or tested on sketchy machines by sketchy testors after being yanked out of some hapless dusty old radio to be sold for big bucks with no warranty with bent rusty pins and smeared printing. I just read a review of the new ARC Reference 150 using KT120s and I have yet to hear anybody dislike that tube in any meaningful way, and it's about as new as it gets. Also, the ARC Ref is about 9 times the cost of my Jolida so I feel thrifty.