Mullard cv4003 & 12au7 Blackburn

I think the Primaluna stock tubes are made by Shuguang for PL.  

I've tried a ton of preamp tubes in my PL Dialogue Prem. HP integrated.  I like Ciftes, Mullards, GE military spec.  RCA clear tops are really bold and aggressive, which is fun but a bit too forward for me.  I sometimes mix a couple cleartops with Mullards or Ciftes with Mullards. 

@lowrider57 I actually forgot all about it haha. Guess it doesn't matter now. The price was way less than Upscale Audio's $110USD CV4003 and I'm sure 60's Blackburn Mullards were quality.

Mixing tubes sounds like a good way to go. Thanks gents!

Good deal, @msommers . I've bought from Andy four times and all his tubes have been of outstanding quality.

msommers, Perhaps I shouldn't write this, since you've already spent your money, but IMO the best sounding 12AU7/ECC82/CV4003 is actually a 6CG7 (in 9-pin miniature format) or a 6SN7 (octal base).  Neither of these tubes is in the 12AU7 family but both of them exhibit the electrical characteristics of a 12AU7 and can be substituted, if you know what you're doing with the tube socket.  You just have to fiddle with the filament connections vis a vis the 6CG7/6FQ7. 6SN7 would take a lot of work and probably is not an option.

Amperex 7316 is not exactly a 12AU7 but can be installed into the same socket with no mods and is close enough electrically that there are no problems.  Nice tube, too.  I admit I have a bias; I have never liked the 12AU7 in a gain stage. OK for driver or phase splitter.  If one must, I liked the Amperex Bugleboy Ecc82/12AU7 best amongst a bunch of others I tried in a gain stage, back about a decade or more ago.  Real Bugleboys are scarce now, sadly.

It's no problem honestly. I bought these knowing full well that I might not even like them! Such as it goes in this hobby. I figure with a reptuation like Andy if I got to sell them at least people can know it wasn't from some random person. I'm not much into tinkering with sockets and such anyways. 

What I was really after were Brimar 13D5 (lots on eBay from India!). Apparently Brimar CV4043 are the better version according to a seller on eBay, which might be true, but I actually looked through various documentation available for CV4003 and CV4043 and nothing came back that they were compatible, even trying to decipher datasheets. I'm a complete amateur so I might be out of line but something just didn't seem right.