NOS Tubes - Ecstasy or Agony

Old thread, but I found it because it’s something I’m thinking about right now. After 30 or more years of doing nothing but all tubes, and primarily “NOS” small signal tubes (never bothered with “NOS” power tubes), I stopped completely about 5 years ago, sold my tube preamp, tube cd player and mono tube amps and went to a naim cd player and a Plinius solid state integrated amp. I’ve never been happier. BUT, recently, having become obsessed with headphones, I bought myself a McIntosh tube headphone amp and, of course, started to think about tube rolling. As another poster said above, over the years I have had new tubes that didn’t sound good or didn’t last, old tubes that didn’t sound good or didn’t last, new tubes that were reliable and sounded good, old tubes that were reliable, some of which sounded great. I can say that newer production tubes are usually the most reliable, even if they’re not sprinkled with 1960’s era fairy dust and don’t give you that special something you can sometimes get with old tubes*

Anyway, as soon as I started rolling in old tubes, I immediately also began worrying about and listening for whether or not the tubes were sounding tired, rather than listening to and enjoying my music. This heightened anxiety over the state of the tubes detracting from my enjoyment of music is one of the reasons I gave up on tubes 5 years ago (Post Tube Stress Disorder?) - to me, it’s not worth it. There are plenty of good current production tubes available, and that is what most manufacturers (other than a few ‘boutiques’) are using to voice their equipment. Of course, with the current political climate, Russian tubes are suddenly become scarce, so even good old reliable (and, IMHO, very nice sounding) eh tubes are starting to command higher prices. Better stock up now so that in 2033, you can auction off your NOS electro-harmonix gold pin 12at7’s for $200/ea.! In all seriousness, having put myself through the mill the last few weeks - cv4024, 6201, RFT, GE, RCA, etc., etc.), I’ve put back the oem McIntosh branded (they won’t say, but pretty sure they’re JJ) tubes, and that’s where I’m going to stay for a while. I might order a set of eh gold pins as a back up, but I do not think that I can bear the constant agony of dealing with so-called ‘NOS’ tubes in the hopes of finding that magic combo which, for 10 minutes or so, might provide musical ecstasy, before I remember that they’re 40, 50 or 60 years old and I start listening for signs of fatigue. 
 

YMMV, IMHO, just my $.03, etc., ad nauseum.

*NOS should mean NEW old stock, but it appears that the term is now used for any tube made before ~1990, whether or not it is actually new (as in unused). Reputable dealers who aren’t certain will often state that the tubes ‘test’ NOS, rather than declaring them actual NOS, but it seems to me that for the most part the term has taken on a secondary, incorrect meaning for use in describing any tube that isn’t new production, regardless of its actual provenance. 

The longest lasting NOS tubes I have ever purchased came from Andy. It's worth the wait.