If you had a dozen pairs of classic vintage ubes in your closet

Most often, these days, the vendor himself did not own the tube from "new", meaning he did not buy it from one of the old time businesses like Radio Shack or Heathkit that once had brick and mortar stores and sold truly new tubes over the counter.   So the seller only knows that the tube looks new and has a proper box to go with it.  That is why I would value sellers that have their own high quality test equipment and are willing to warrant that a tube tests within new specifications.  There are a few out there.  But how did this get into a discussion of fraud in the tube business?  I thought we were talking about the impulse to tube roll.

I have a lot of NOS tubes, in baggies, by type.  I use them as replacement for Gold Lions reissues that fail.  I keep waiting but none of the 12's will fail.  I quit buying NOS Tubes maybe 15 years ago.  Price vs. Performance became an issue as the product became more and more scarce and costly.  Looking back, I was buying NOS tubes to make gear sound better so, I just started buying better gear LOL.

midareff1

here's an active listing that may show the TT

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133653044198

@vegasears I hear you but you can only demo so many allegedly "better" pre-amps and amplifiers at very significant cost levels, and watch dealers leave with the tail between the proverbial legs before you decide maybe expensive NOS tubes are a pretty good way to go. Some vintage gear just simply kicks axx when in a well matched system. Last demo pre was an Audio Research LS 27 and tube guys just don’t or won’t haul 70 pound amps in here anymore for a room full of guys to agree the SS amps were better tonally and detail wise. I just installed half my remaining NOS Siemens and Halske Cca 6922 grey plates (1962 issue). I see a pair for sale at $2K. I used to buy them for $40 each.... maybe 10 years ago I sold some for $200 each.. I should have kept them.    Replacing a vintage pre with a new $16K (or more) unit is not a solution to not buying NOS tubes.

You do realize that all tubes are aging during every minute that you are using them, do you not? So, you can pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for tubes that may sound wonderful on day one. That is a best case scenario, because in many cases inexpensive tubes will sound better than these rare NOS tubes that cost a great deal of money. But let’s assume that The expensive tube does sound great. From that moment forward it is decaying. Eventually your investment will fizzle out. You can get much more bang for the buck, if you learn how to solder, and how to read a schematic, and upgrade coupling capacitors for example in your gear. That sort of change is permanent and never goes away. Capacitors make a far larger difference to overall sound quality than do tubes.

Furthermore, when you do pay big bucks for a tube and install it, you are then very biased toward hearing an improvement. None of us is free from that listener bias. You have spent the money, so it must’ve done a lot of good. Get your wife or someone who doesn’t know what you did to have a listen, before you get wild over a boutique vacuum tube.