Tubes, old and new

Everything which was done from engineers in that time was for professional use and there was also a lot of competition. Reliability, heat management was a serious chapter on its own. The comeback of tubes is for High End only with all its negative facts (cheap production, lousy wires inside, marketing, Distributor chain, no real knowledge from the modern buyers, too).
On the other side, some NOS are really expensive, real NOS became rare and even burned down tubes with a famous name are totally overpriced. And it is normal that all those who deal with old tubes have only bad words about new ones. In a way they are responsible that for some old - expensive - ones the price went down.
Compared to these prices the new ones are ok. And as usual, you find from everything average, good or better ones. It is the same rule valid like for all "High End" products: when no one has a clue from something, you will get products where the manufacturer says: It is good enough for you. Be it Turntable, Arms, reissue vinyl, Phono Stages....and so on. "They fix it in the marketing".
And the Chinese (and others) do exactly that and not for a dime more. Russian Jet Fighter tubes are the way to go when you want something serious for a fair price. But unfortunately, they did not use 300B, 12AX7....

Yes, back in the heyday of tubes manufacturers put their labels on tubes made by someone else, but it wasn't with bad intent. Tubes cost a couple of bucks back then and most people didn't care if they had an RCA or a Mullard in their tv or radio.

It's not too hard to determine what tube you actually have these days.

Phillips tubes (Amperex, Mullard, Siemens, Valvo and many more) have codes etched into the glass. A list of the codes and how to read them can be found here:
http://frank.pocnet.net/other/Philips/PhilipsCodeListAB.pdf

Telefunkens have a diamond molded into the glass at the bottom between the pins and RCA etched an octagon around the tube variety (e.g. 12AX7) into the glass near the top of the tube for a couple of examples of identifying characteristics.

The Tubemonger has a huge library of photographs of vintage tubes that is very helpful in identifying tubes.

Of course, scammers have found ways to counterfeit many tubes and there can be subtle differences between a top shelf tube and its low shelf relatives, so it is best to buy from a reputable dealer rather than try your luck on ebay, probably cheaper in the long run too. A good dealer has a lot of experience that is invaluable.

I do enjoy learning about tubes and their various qualities, though.

Fantastic! Thanks Tom.

You're welcome Bdp24. You are most likely to see Phillips tubes with the "New Code" etched into the side of the glass near the bottom (top drawing at the bottom of page 3), using the top two "Examples of "correct code" format." So you can skip all the stuff about the "Old Code" and other code formats. It's not too hard to figure out the codes but if you have any questions feel free to ask me.