12au7 tube?

I don’t recommend people buying a lot of tubes as I e done but I think it’s fine to pick up 2 or 3 different pairs of well respected vintage tubes and hear which they prefer. But if someone is already happy with the tubes they’re using, then I don’t see a need to try something else.  I’ve always did the tube rolling thing because I was curious about the differences. But nowadays, if I get a new component in my home and if it sounds good with the existing tubes, I usually leave it alone. About a yr ago, I purchased a very large single ended tube amplifier that uses GE 805 tube driven my a 300b and some small GE 5751 tubes with a Amperex 12ax7.  All the tubes in the amplifier are vintage and to me, the amp sounded fine. So I left all the existing tubes in the amp and went on to purchasing many of the exact tubes as backups. I don’t like having such a big collection of tubes and that is gonna be my children’s problem when I die. I feel having tubes in stock is similar to having cables in stock. All these things are tweaks to perfect the ultimate sound. I have a decent collection of cables as well, Interconnects, power cables and speaker cables. I own about 5 tube testers and have about 15 tube amplifiers.  Not suggesting anyone go to this level as I know I’ve went too far.  

@lowtubes

Man you’re speaking like a kindred soul here - I feel almost exactly the same way, and yeah, I also went way too far. On the plus side, my tube needs for life are easily filled. On the downside, it’s far too hard to liquidate these collections without a lot of give-aways and/or accepting pennies on the dollar. I'm just not into recouping funds 100 bucks at a time, for the effort involved here. So eventually, someone inherits the problem.

These days I spend less time tube rolling, because most vintage small tubes sound really good anyways, and your hearing just adapts to their nuances over time. If I want to change sonic flavors in a much more meaningful way, it’s easier to swap a cartridge or SUT (or components, or speakers).

Versus signal tubes, power tubes actually yield a more meaningful delta to shaping the sound IMO, but they’re mostly new (not vintage) and it’s pretty quick to hone in on which is the "right" choice for an amp. With small tubes you can easily get into a back-and-forth never ending hell trying to figure out which you actually like better.

It’s nice to know we’re not too crazy despite what our better half will tell us.  

No, we are not, but still crazy enough.

Most of my audio friends have collected way more stuff than what they need. I think this is something pandemic to this hobby and it happens over time the longer someone stays in it. My close friend has more than 15 of the best and sought after tube testers. Tons of other stuff like over 30 Guitars cause he’s a musician also. Reason why I got so many 12au7’s was in the beginning of me entering this hobby, my main pre for almost 10 yrs used only that type tube in the linestage. And back then, (over 30 yrs ago) we didn’t have so many various cables to tweak the sound as we have today. So tube rolling was a big thing then. Today there are additional options like trying different cables that do practically the same thing more or less. I use both options when I’m able.