6SN7 Tung Sol Reissue Mullard 12AX7 any comments?

In a neutral system, the Tung Sol re-issue is a honky sounding tube...nothing smooth or natural about it. For a bit more, you can get into NOS Sylvania VT231 tubes...smooth and extended. Good stuff!

I am using the new Mullard long plates and new GEC Gold Lions (from what I have read, the consensus is that these are the most highly regarded new production KT88's and some say they are *better* than the originals) in an Audio Note Kit 2 and have no complaints. Both are good tubes. There is no *best* tube as they are all circuit dependent. I have not tried the new Tung Sol 6SN7 but it is certainy a different tube from the EH.

I have been around tubes for a long time and there is a lot of *marketing* hype in the world of NOS too. I am just happy to see good sounding affordable new production tubes.

OK, I got my TungSol RI 6SN7s. Visually, there was little difference. Eveything you can see looks identical except for the color of the plates. The EH have gray plates, the TS have black. I put 5 in one AtmaSphere MA1, and left the Electro Harmonix tubes in the other (I actually took them out and put them back in, in case that would make a difference, maybe by cleaning corosion off the contacts). I let the TSs bun in fo about 25 hours. I ran the outputs of my Wadia GNSC 850 to a Pass X1 preamp, which I set to mono. I then disconnected both speaker wires, and pulled them to one side so they were coming from the same spot, and I could not tell which was which. I labelled one A and the other B. I put one Talon Hawk with stand in the middle of the living room and did a blind test of the amplifiers with different tubes. I concluded the one with the Tung Sols sounded noticably better than the one with the EH tubes. The TSs sounded richer in the lows, more 3 dimensional, and more liquid. By comparison, the EHs sounded a bit metallic and flat. The difference was not huge; it was not like the change you get from changing a major component like an amplifier or CD player. The basic characte of the amplifers was the same, but one was a better version than the other. Unlike many comnponent changes, there seemed to be no tradeoff; I didnt' hear anything get worse going from the EH to the TS. The only question in my mind still is whether the difference was due to the design of the tube themselves, orr the aging of the EH tubes. The EH are about 1.5 years old, and have about 1200 hours on them (I estimate). I suppose I should buy a set of new EH to come to some real conclusions. I'll think about it.

Honest1 - thanks for experimenting and giving us your report. I also have MA-1s and use mostly VT-231 Ken-Rads and RCAs - which are not getting any cheaper. The TS may be worth a try. Where'd you get 'em?

I got them from TubeStore.com. TubeDepot has them also; both sell them for $15.00 each. How often do you typically replace tubes? I'm really wondering how much of what I heard was due to the age of the ElectroHarmonix tubes. If you try them out, let us know how they compare to your vintage tubes.