Best of current 12ax7?

No one mentioned Sophia or EAT 12ax7's. The EAT's are very pricey for a new tube but some reviews I've read rated them highly. Hard to find information on the Sophia's.

One thing for certain, there are a lot of new (non-NOS) 12ax7's currently available although most are probably coming from the same factories but with different names and different quality control standards.

I mentioned the Sophia tubes, see my above post. Excellent tubes.

Sorry about that, yes I saw your mention of the Sophias. Can you name a good source for them? Thanks

Rja...I bought mine from Galen Carol.

https://www.gcaudio.com/cgi-bin/store/showProduct.cgi?id=791

I agree that the sonic result is dependent on the context and application. I have had good luck with and enjoy JJ, Sovtek, Genelex and Telefunken in a variety of applications, power amps, pre amps, phono stages and guitar amps. It all depends, which is why rolling to find what is good in a given context is de riguer.