Siemens EL 34

So I have two quads of Mullards; one is amperex and the other true Mullards.

My only point of comparison was the Groove Tube EL 34 . the Mullards are much richer sounding.  I remember when I first used the Amperex Mullards, my son commented that it sounded like the musicians were in the room with us.

My 6L6 quads are NOS GE and RCA.  I actually like the GE better.

Both are better than the stock Sovtek the amp came with.

I like the 6L6 better than EL 34 in my amp ( Leben 600). The bass is much tighter with the 6L6 and the sound stage a bit larger.

I also have 5881 RCA/ Tungsol.

They are wonderful.

Lastly I am embarrassed to admit I have two sets of Russian NOS 6n3cE which are very musical in the Leben cs600.

Clearly this is an illness; the search for the "perfect" tube. I have more tube life than biological life left.  I calculate that I should have over 40 years of tube-life ( assuming a conservative 5000 hours per quad ).  That should last me into my early 100's.  Hopefully my hearing will last that long as well.

Hope this helps

Mike

I'd say you are pretty well set on tubes... no need to try more unless you are a collector.

op

if you can, show pics of the telefunken el34’s you are talking about

i don’t believe telefunken actually made el34’s ... in the 80’s in eastern germany rft made slim bottle dimple top el34’s that were labelled many different brands (rft, national, siemens, also telefunken and so on)... very decent tubes but in my experience not in the same league as true uk mullard, dutch amperex, or even, the later japan-made seam topped ones on relocated mullard tooling

I do not have  pics; but they are the EL34 sold by RAM tubes.

Does that shed any light?

BTW have you heard the Tesla EL34 from the 90's?

ram (roger mojeski’s operation, rip roger!) is/was a tube seller and rebrander, a good one at that, but as such they source different tubes from different origins, test and screen, then silkscreen their logo over that of the original manufacturers', so the fact that these have ram printed on them in ram boxes does not tell you what underlying tube you have

here are a few links with pics to show you the various tubes that have been sold as 'telefunkens' el34's in the past

ebay old stock siemens tube set -- note the thin glass bottles (relative to the bakelite bases), dimpled top, two horizontal vents in the vertical plate, 4 staples on each side -- this is the rft east german made tube i referred to in my prior post... here is another example of a pair of the same tube but labelled rft ... here are more of the same tube, this time marked telefunken

’telefunken’ el34 set on ebay -- here is another pair of tubes on ebay... by their brown color base, the same width glass bottle, very rounded dome on top with no dimple, double ring getter construction on top, single plate vent, five round staples each side, that is a tesla czech made tube from the 80’s-90’s... closer in quality to true blue brit mullards or dutch amperexes, very good tube

here is a third kind sometimes labelled telefunken, in this case, labelled siemens... this is a yugoslavian made old stock ’ei’ factory tube... note very different construction with the pointed tip at the top... ei made these and also fat bottle el34/6ca7’s back in the day before the plant was destroyed in the war, these are equivalent quality as the rft's in my use, leaner sound, less body

in addition to the above there were indeed some (not many) real deal uk/dutch made el34’s that were rebranded telefunken back in the day... the link below is an example of these... they will have mullard or amperex production codes and d- or 0 shaped double getters, brown or black bakelite bases, even width glass bottles, relatively squared off smooth domes.... here is real deal uk mullard sold as a telefunken

so op, you can check the above against what you have