I can only conclude that your source may not be feeding the Telefunkens a clean enough signal to fully appreciate them. I see this a lot where folks say certain tubes are not musical.
The Telefunkens sound bright and not as musical
Any love for the Gentalex Gold Lion 12ax7 gold pin?
I am not a fan of new production tubes but have to say I really like this tube better than my Telefunkens. The Telefunkens sound bright and not as musical.I also have some black plate RCA’s and early 60’s Mullards and others. I’m really enjoying these gold pin GL’s. Are they better than the RCA and Mullard not sure. But if you ask me today I say yes.
i emailed Audio Hungary a while back and asked what tube they voiced or preferred in the A50i and he said the Gold Lion gold pin with out a doubt are the best in this amp vs vintage tubes. I thought for sure he was wrong but he built the amp he must know something. Better than vintage he’s got to be wrong. What the hell I bought some, not cheap either. So I just received them and stuck them in and I’m very impressed.
The amp also takes 4 6922’s and the amp came stock with Gold Lion gold pin but not a fan of those. I much more prefer my Amprex SQ, PQ’s, Valvo’s,and others. The Gold Lion gold pin 6922’ s sound sterile and lifeless compare to my vintage 6922 tube’s.
Anyone experience this with this tube or any other current production signal tube? I find it balanced all the way through. Little caught off guard with this one.
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I have four Gold Lion 12ax7 gold pins in storage, they were the first I switched to over the stock tubes in my phono pre. A nice upgrade, for the money, but as @noromance inferred, I then replaced those with four old Telefunken smooth plates, and albeit being similar in tone, the Tele's were much smoother and really superior in all ways. After that I tried two 60's Blackburn Mullard's in combination with two of the Telefunken smooth plates, and liked that combo even more, in my setup. All that said, yes, for the money, the Gold Lions are very good, but can be easily beat my venerable older tubes. But they will cost significantly more....but in terms of 'return on investment', an easy justification for me. |
The new tubes are very good and unless you have a large tube collection from which to conduct endless trials, it’s usually more about proper sonic pairing than raw sound quality IMO. Telefunken ribbed plates can be bright, but the smooth plate variant is warmer - check which you have. The Russian "re-issues" are good to mix & match in 3 variants: Tung-Sol - little extra energy up top Reissue Gold Lions are really quite nice as you’ve found, and their well tempered musical balance makes them a good "first guess" fit for most systems. The best NOS tubes are more articulate with more 3D image, but if you don’t get the right sonic match then it doesn’t matter, as you’ve found out. If you like re-issue Gold Lions you might like Amperex Holland, or black plate RCA (which you already mentioned), or even Tele smooth plates. The reissue Mullards and Tung-Sols track (somewhat) with their namesake vintage 12AX7. British Mullards are very warm. I usually prefer Tele ribbed over smooth plates, incidentally, but you do have to deal with the brightness. If you can, I find them to be more detailed and dynamic. Mazda silver plates take this even further. Mazda silver with a Koetsu cartridge can be divine 😍 One brand I regret not exploring more in the 12AX7 space - Siemens. Their E88CC ended up being my favorite in the 6922 type, of MANY variants. They combine air & energy up top, sweet natural mids (bordering on lush) with top grade bass & dynamics. All while remaining super clean with top clarity. Almost seems impossible to pull off. |
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