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Calling All Tube Gurus

I know everyone loves to have their tubes come from the same date codes and manufacturers. But just how critical is this?


If you can determine that a tube was made in the same plant, has the same construction and date codes, how critical is it if the tube was made by Siemens and rebranded as an Amperex? Or let’s say the tubes has the same construction but were manufactured within a year or so of each other?


I’ve heard people say that if a manufactures tubes are not up to their standards, THOSE are the tubes they send out to the other manufactures for their branding. Fact or fiction?


Has anyone experimented to see how these variables actually affect their music? I realize everyone has their own tolerance to what is acceptable to them, and that it can also be system dependent, but I am curious to the findings any of you may have.

elrod

Showing 1 response by larryi

larryi
4,188 posts
 

Alvinnir2,

Very good observations/advice.  Some people get a bit too obsessed with matching.  A local dealer has a huge collection of used tubes that still test very strong and he "matches" them by finding tubes with the same internal structure.  That is it. 

I am "blessed" with running such rare and exotic tubes that there is no issue about matching; if they work that is as close to matching as I will get (I run 310, 311, 348, and 349 tubes).  If I ran more conventional tubes, I still would not go crazy with matching.  I could do matching the right way if I wanted to using something like the Amplitrex tube tester which can, if hooked to a computer, curve-trace the tube.  That really is the best way to match tubes, but it takes a lot of experience.  I can read the curves and I know what they show, but, I have no idea what is good enough or what is a close match.

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