NOS EL34 becoming extinct

Try to find some Svetlana Winged C’s. Last I saw they were $100 Ea. They are fabulous. I trade tubes with a friend and he loaned me some Winged C 6L6, they were really nice too ! He’s a guitar guy , not a stereo fan. He stocked up on NOS Mullard FX 3 ( I think ), and they are his favorite. It’s off topic but I gave him some new production Tung Sol 5751’s to try as I was impressed , especially being new production. My pre takes 8 Russian 6H and they’re $300 each. 😮 So I’m running Sovtek. Happy Hunting , Mike B. 

Before switching to Mullard EL34 XF2 a few months ago I was using SED Svetlana Winged C's in my VAC Avatar SE integrated. They were alright but nothing more, the Mullards are far better in every respect. Besides, one SED failed after 700 hours, I bought them new from Tube Depot, they still have them for $120 each.

If you want to try new production EL34 you might try Russian Mullard reissue, many like them more than SED Winged. They are something like $50-$75 each from Upscale Audio or other places.

I personally have absolutely no intention of buying any reissues.

For EL 34s I have used and still have NOS mullards, jj's, winged c's, NOS telefunkens, and two or three other brands I don't remember.

Once I purchased Gold Lion KT77's from Upscale Audio I never needed another brand of tube.  They are dependable and very musical.  

I didn't believe that any new production EL34 tube could rival NOS until I used the GL KT77 tube which changed my mind.  Ignore those who have never tried this tube and make blanket statements.  There is nothing but accolades for them on the forum.  To me they are so good it is a waste to purchase NOS EL34s at today's prices.

I would think that how contemporary EL34 tubes sounded in the unit would be one of the design elements in a very well crafted contemporary design.

If you build a tube amp with a contemporary tube and change all the other design parameters to optimize it for the sound you want... with circuits, capacitor, resister, etc choices... then NOS would just sound different, not better.  Assuming of course you want the sound the designer produced. 

I'm sure that many mid level designs are  made expecting tube rolling and therefore are fairly generic middle of the road design... an let the user tune with tubes. 

One of my amps is a low power SEP from Dennis Had. I purchased a pair of the new production GL KT-77’s from one of the reputable sellers long before there were supply issues. At about the 50 hour mark one failed with a huge pop through my speaker and damaged my amp. I was able to ship it back to Dennis for repair. I included the tubes for him to examine as the bad tube showed no change externally. Out of the approximately 20 Winged C’s I’ve had , one failed. It was a 6550 in my 50 watt mono block not an EL34. I heard a mild pop and turned off the amp. The envelope had cracked turning the inside of the glass frost white. There was no damage to my push pull amp. Last month I had Rogue Audio upgrade a pair of M-180’s to their Dark edition and inquired about new power tubes in addition to the small signal tubes supplied in the upgrade. They currently use only Psvane KT-88’s in their amps as they do not trust the quality of new production GL or Tung Sol tubes. The octet of GL KT -77’s that I had were about done. I really want some Tung Sol KT 120’s and am not thrilled about paying Uncle Chester $1100 for an octet. Another interesting fact with the upgrade is they no longer supply nos small signal tubes ( same issue )  and supply new Tung Sol 5751’s and JJ gold pin 12AU7’s. The JJ’s still suck , but the Tung Sol’s sounded really nice. I think I’m turning into one of those snippy old farts that I dislike. 😆 I guess death , taxes , and new production tubes are inevitable. Cheers , Mike B.