primer on buying vintage tubes?


Dear all-

I recently started to tiptoe into tube rolling--replacing the 6922 stock tubes in my headphone amp etc.

I am curious as to why vintage tubes are often preferred to the new ones? Why would older tubes sound better?

And even more pressing, I'm curious about best practices for buying vintage tubes. I recently came across a pair on ebay that were not labeled NOS but the seller did say the had been measured on a tube tester and had 100% emission. If this a safe bet? Is it better to buy NOS? Is it better yet to deal with a vendor like Upscale Audio?

Thanks for any insights! Margot
mcanaday

Showing 1 response by vinylvalet

Jim McShane, Brent Jesse, Andy Bowman, Brendan Biever and Doug's Tubes are all great tube vendors. I've also had good luck with larger vendors like Tube Depot. I would never recommend Upscale Audio. My experience with them has been terrible. Others have had problems with Upscale as well.

Not only will you get bad tubes from Upscale but it's likely the service will be even worse. With all the good tube vendors mentioned above, there is no reason to consider Upscale.