CHINESE tubes?

We used to use the Russian 6SN7s. They really didn't perform well and were unreliable. About 1998 or so we switched to Chinese 6SN7s and they have been treating us quite well. They are not the best sounding 6SN7, but they are not bad. They are copies of the JAN Phillips 6SN7 and not surprisingly sound about the same.

I find that the Russian power tubes on the other hand work pretty well. The Chinese power tubes don't seem to do so well.

We use Chinese 12AT7s in our phono sections since its hard to find 12AT7s that are quiet and non-microphonic- terrible luck in that regard with the Russian tubes! But a box of 100 of the Chinese tubes will have only about 10 rejects, which is better than the about 90% reject of the Russian variety! Most of the NOS tubes these days are too noisy.

So my impression is that the Chinese do pretty good on the small signal tubes and not so good with the power tubes.

Regarding the boutique tubes: Psvane, Sophia and TJ Music:

This applies only to the 6SN7s so far, but customer feedback on these tubes is that they combine the best qualities of the NOS varieties without their weaknesses! pretty potent comments! No reliability issues have been reported so far (the last 2-3 years or so). Again, these comments apply only to the 6SN7 (there are no boutique 6AS7Gs as yet, and the only other tubes we use are the 12AT7 and 12AU7).