Do you Know a Trusted Seller of Chinese Vacuum Tubes?

Grant Fidelity – Premium Vacuum Tubes (https://premiumvacuumtubes.com) is a seller which I trust for Linlai tubes. The Linlai Global Elites are very good vacuum tubes from China. Grant Fidelity provides testing and screening service beyond the testing which the manufacturer provides. Most of the vacuum tubes sold are used in SET circuits like 2A3s, 300Bs, 211, 845, and 274Bs. The variety of input tubes and other output tubes are limited though so Grant Fidelity may not serve everyone's needs. 

It would be nice if there were more retail sales partners based in North America (or Europe) who screen Chinese tubes before selling them. There are some preselected varieties, like from Tube Amp Doctor (TAD) which are likely more consistent in quality than vacuum tubes bought from Amazon.com, or sellers based in China. TAD might still source from Russia and locations other than China, so it is best to do homework on each desired tube type regarding their likely origin.

It would be nice if there were more retail sales partners based in North America (or Europe) who screen Chinese tubes before selling them.

Yes, that’s probably the point of this post. We need more North American resellers who test for noise. There are some great new tubes being made these days.

Sage advice.

immathew thanks. Yes it was meant to be hearsay. 

Problem with extra testing is that these procedures take time and often buyers are not willing to spend the extra money. New production tubes are considered, often, just a commodity. 

The real problem is that out of a lot of 500 tubes, sometimes as many as 200 would test bad and/or be unmatchable and the manufacturer does not take them back.

Check out Ram Tubes they do extensive testing, it was Roger Modjesky of Music Reference's tube company. The EL34s I bought recently were chinese and have worked out well

https://www.ramtubes.com/