Which NOS tubes on my ASL 1009 for more warmth?

Most of your sonic improvements should be with the 12AU7s. You can purchase Mullard EL34/6BQ5 New Production for $25 (matched pair)and save $350. Evaluate your system as Newbee suggested and determine the 12AU7 that best match your system. Plus, you have a lot more 12AU7s to choose from to refine sonic characteristics of your system.

Thanks for the info guys...what are SED's?.

SED is the brand name used by the original manufacturer of "Svetlana" tubes. The current SED's and old Svetlana's as essentially the same tube. They were made in St Petersberg. Around the year 2000+/- this manufacturer lost the use of its name (Svetlana) in North America and adopted the name SED. Its brand logo changed from an S to a winged C (=C=).

If you do some research for user comments here and on Audio Asylum's tube forums you will find that some fairly experienced users consider them amoungst the finest new production and some consider them as good as most NOS. I've been using them for about 15 years and have not been disappointed and have never had a premature failure. I find them tonally neutral. If anything a tad warm compared to some other popular tubes and they might be similar to Mullards, but I've never paid $400 to find out. :-)

Winged Cs are awesome tubes. My $.02 is spending big $ for nos is idiotic.

Hi Jman

I've just bought a used 1009. Which tubes did you finally get? Can you share what you have tried, how they sounded in your system and why you settled on the current ones?