TAD vacuum tubes?

They don't make their own. They're mostly selected tubes. 

What noromance said it's not a bad thing but if you start with a meh tube even the best examples won't sound great. I picked up a pair of 6L6 tubes from them and they were pretty nondescript sounding.

Thank you, @noromance ​​​​​@jond .  

TAD rebrands selected Chinese tubes.  In my experience they are more reliable than buying stock Chinese tubes, but are not as good as Russian-manufactured tubes.  In another thread I mentioned testing a series of 6L6/KT66 family tubes in my Williamson amplifiers.  The Gold Lion KT66s measured much better, producing more power and less distortion before clipping, than TAD KT66s.  The Gold Lions also sound better, more open and textured.  I stick with Russian tubes myself, and that includes rectifiers and small signal tubes.

I bought a TAD Rectifier, 5U4G for my Decware UFO, good price and sounds very good. Would purchase again.

Thanks to all for the input.

I am way good on my over supply of 6922/6DJ8s and 6SN7s and EL84s, but I am thinking ahead about the dozen EL34s for my Cary V-12.  Without any intent whatsoever to start a political discussion, I presently do not want to purchase tubes manufactured in Russia, and I am wondering what the options will be when the time comes.  I probably will not be able to justify the price of a dozen vintage EL34s, so when the day comes, I may have to park that amp and break back out my smaller Cary amp that only uses four 6550s, of which I own three different  serviceable quads.  

You might consider the new Psvane Horizon series, which are available on Amazon.  The EL34-AT is supposedly a pretty good tube.

Brent Jesse has older and newer Chinese EL34’s for $100 and $80 a pair.

He also has 1970’s production Siemens for $200 a pair.

He sold out of the Japanese/Philips EL34’s since the last time I looked (a month or two ago).

DeKay

PS:

Just read a few places that the TAD EL34 STR Red Base is made in China or Hong Kong and tested in Germany.

A few pics showed "GERMANY" in raised letters molded into the bottom of the base.

So special production (the bases anyway) for TAD?

The first site I looked @ they were on sale for around $37.

DeKay

@dekay I’ve never noticed the raised lettering in the bottom of my TAD Red Base EL34s - I’m now curious.

I can’t say much about the sonic signature of these tubes since I was previously running KT88s in my amp. I will say that these EL34s have been reliable over the course of the past 9 months with long use during the weekends. If I remember correctly I paid just under $200 for a quad from Viva.

Toro3:

One of the lettering pics was @ TubeDepot.

Seems that most of the online reviews of this tube are for its use in guitar amps, which does not equate to HiFi (IMO) and I played electric guitar from the early 60's until 1986.

Back then I was more picky about the tubes in my guitar amps than the tubes I used in my Eico, Mac and Dynaco gear.

DeKay

Thanks for the input.  When the time comes I'll need a couple of matched sextets.