I have four Gold Lion 12ax7 gold pins in storage, they were the first I switched to over the stock tubes in my phono pre. A nice upgrade, for the money, but as @noromance inferred, I then replaced those with four old Telefunken smooth plates, and albeit being similar in tone, the Tele's were much smoother and really superior in all ways. After that I tried two 60's Blackburn Mullard's in combination with two of the Telefunken smooth plates, and liked that combo even more, in my setup.
All that said, yes, for the money, the Gold Lions are very good, but can be easily beat my venerable older tubes. But they will cost significantly more....but in terms of 'return on investment', an easy justification for me.