Tube Rolling - Any tips or caveats

Get VERY familiar with the sound of your pre-amp with stock tubes. Make notes of the areas that you would like improve i.e. more impactful bass, extended highs etc. Once you have a list of attributes that you wish to improve, research for a tube that exhibit said traits or post on this forum for tubes suggestion i.e. looking for a 12AX7 with extended highs etc. When searching for NOS tubes you must have a game plan and an objective, otherwise it becomes an expensive guessing game.

Thank you mofimadness for that link. That is a great article. My experince with NOS Amperex 6dj8's in my phono section mirror the comments in his article. A lot of good info in the world of NOS preamp tubes.

Thanks for the tips.

BRF, I know what I want, extended bass and more dynamics. I have already been lining up some reference recordings that I have been listening to for a while.

I have already purchased a pair of telefunken 12AX7's so that will be the starting point. I realized after purchasing them that the SP-16 has 3 tubes in the phono section. And I spoke with ARC and they suggested to leave in the stock tube at the input as it must be low noise. I also wasn't aware that there was a low-noise so I have no way of knowing if the telefunken are or not (other than trying them out).

Knowing the above, next time I will buy my tubes from someone sepcialized in tubes, as recommended.

As for the Mofi's Audioasylum link, it was very informative, but I am not sure I ready to switch to 5751's.

Other respectable tube suppierls are : tubemonegr; Tube depot & brent jesse - you can get good NOS tubes w/o spending a fortune

Be careful pulling out and inserting tubes so you don't mash the tiny plug in the ceramic tube holder