What are we going to do about Tele 12AU7 prices

Que? 

They don’t seem priced higher than what other good driver tubes are.

Manufacturers also must consider consistency across their desired product run. For knstance, Audio Note may desire to produce 1,000 units of the XYZ integrated over a 10 year period. Maybe it has 4 XYZ tubes inside so they must stockpile or have access to 4,000 XYZ tubes plus, say, another 5,000 to cover warranties and retubes. So, when speccing the tube they need to spec where they can access 9-10,000 of this type type. Bespoke manufacturers like Shindo or Kondo might do limited runs of 20 pieces which reduces considerably the tube stockpile required. I would venture to guess that Schiit has no plan to produce anything remotely approching a small batch of anything. If they could sell 100,000 Freyas they would. Therefore, they will always spec their gear with the widest production of tube types to ensure product consistency. No serious manufacturer is going to spec a large batch product with an extremely limited tube as in rarer NOS varietals.

this that @ghasley describes is key to understand, and for even really excellent tube gear from an established maker, this provides an opportunity for us as singular users to experiment to find potentially better sounding tubes in our units - not that the process of doing so is without substantial effort or cost...

Good points made above that make sense once explained.  👍🏻

Fortunately, Tele 12au7’s aren’t the holy grail of the 12au7 family or nearly as coveted as Tele 12ax7’s.

@mozartfan Look into the Amperex Bugle Boys. They are less expensive. There is a military version called the 7316 which is the one to get.


As with any tube, results vary from tube to tube. Make sure you get good ones and that you can return them if noisy or microphonic.