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Best Tubes on Market today?

I'd like to upgrade tubes on my Mastersound Compact 845 SET.
I'm getting a loud buzzing noise from both channels at  listening position which I find extremely annoying.
 My current tubes are Shuguang 845C (cheap Chinese electron). Pre amp tubes are Tungsram ECC82 and driver tubes 6SN7 EH. Probably all cheap stock tubes. I Love the the sweet sound but noise level is unacceptable.  Also very audible transformer noise, but I doubt there is a fix for that. Are there other ways to minimize tube/transformer noise?

What are the most reliable aforementioned tubes out there and what is the best place to get them?
Upscale audio seems to have quite a selection. PSVANE was also recommended by some. 
 I would prefer not to spend more than $600 on 845 tubes and hoping for reliable clean sounding tubes all around.    
I also have C2600 preamp with stock tubes. Any advice on those? 
ei001h

Showing 1 response by rklune

rklune
36 posts
 
If I was trying to solve a noise problem in my amp that I thought was coming from the tubes, I would not think for a minute that I should run out and spend hundreds/thousands of dollars on vintage tubes to solve the problem. I would first want to swap the tubes with another set of known "good" tubes just to see if that altered the problem in some way.

There is no reason not to buy a new set of tubes at reasonable prices to test this hypothesis. Upscale Audio and a number of other established sellers have plenty of quality tubes that will sound excellent and allow you to diagnose this issue without spending excessive amounts of money on a guess.
And I totally agree with all the posts that warn of buying tubes on ebay. That is nothing short of Russian roulette. That is NOT the place to go to solve this problem.
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