12au7 tube?

Tried 22 different pairs of vintage 12au7s, and 6 pairs of new re-issues.

Vintage best for me, 1965 Blackburn Plant Mullards if you like vintage. Stored now.

New, PSVANEs are lasting longer than any of my former Gold Lyons.

Get them curve tracer matched triodes w/guarantee, with guarantee.  

@audiojan Thanks everyone. I have a bunch of tubes incoming. Radiotechnique, Genalex Gold Lion, Brimar, Amperex.

That's the way to do it.  Do some nice pair comparisons, select a few vintage you like, and a few new/re-issue tubes to play when you like. Then store off the keepers and sell off the stuff that's just okay or does not gel well with your system so much. 

@curiousjim My preamp uses 12au7’s and I’ve tried PSVANE and will never buy them again and would suggest than nobody should buy from them!

Share more. While I have more vintage pairs of 12au7s than I care to recall - including RCAs, GE, Tungsram, the best of Blackburn Mullards, and more ---- and just sent back failed Gold Lyons, I’m currently running PSVANE 12au7, 12at7, factory direct for a year and no problems so far. My local dealer runs all OEM PSVANE made and rebranded for AudioNote, no major reports of failures.

Always curious where folks source their tubes from and how they get packed and shipped. The poorly packed and shipped tubes sure do seem to suffer past few years, fwiw. Always taking photos when I unbox to show packing, boxing, effort.

@curiousjim ...A couple of weeks later I read an article saying that PSVANE had put out a batch of 12au7 Art series tubes that were bad. Again I sent emails mentioning the article to PSV and Viva and still they won’t budge! So that’s why I will never buy PSVANE tubes again and I will never buy from Viva again.

Transparently - something very similar happened for me. Had everything to do with the tubes being lightly packed, loose boxes, no foam or peanuts inside. Same seller, and they were Gold Lyon, not PSVANE. Got a refund, thankfully. Crackling and snapping and popping in the first 1hr, and tried again like you - several times. Had been down this same path with other tubes, but something in common I found.

There is a whole other thread about this, and I’m challenging the distributors and reailers who unbox from Asia, and then test, and not put foam or peanuts and all that back in - leaving the tubes LOOSE inside, rattling and bouncing during shipping. Even the leaders at PSVANE are aware of poor re-packing/shipping issues. And they seemed to have fessed up a bout some batches that went bad  a while back, told me "poor QA". This next - Not sure what your case is - but I’’ll mention this if you need it. This can helps if you suspect poor repacking to you. 

You have another option. I just got a pair replaced, direct from the factory. They are going to ask you to share intel and photos and will want you to physically break the tubes to replace them - send them photos back of it all - in order to get replacements. Contact PSVANE direct. Try it, they were good responding to me. Took 17 days to get replacements. I’m using my 6SN7 replacements now, no issues, were packed really well too - fingers crossed for you., https://psvane.co/pages/contact-1

@twoleftears Question: has anyone tried the Apos Ray 12AU7, which seems to be the new kid on the block making a few waves.

Are you aware of who the OEM is for Ray tubes btw?

Not to blow their cover but it’s fairly easy to search and find on the internet. Think large manufacturer who batches their top % of tested tubes and puts a different label on it.. Perhaps the helpful part is they are supposed to be top matched triodes tested [and as good as a guarantee that Ray gives them] whatever that is at the time the warranty is needed fwiw.