I have tried Tele, Amperex, EH, JJ, and EI in mine (just the line stage - not using the phono).
In my system the BB Amperex were the best by a very small margin. I settled on the EI as most pleasing overall. The JJ and EI were both right there with the Amperex, some differences were not clearly discernible between the 3, certainly not enough to justify a 10x cost differential! The SP16 IMHO is not a good enough component to burn up really good tubes in, anyway.
The differences from tube to tube was not as great in this component as others, surprisingly enough, but I found the EH tubes were clearly the worst by a large margin: less detail, wooly bass, rolled off highs, dark and distant sounding. These are the stock tubes - you won't believe the improvement when you yank them.
In my system the BB Amperex were the best by a very small margin. I settled on the EI as most pleasing overall. The JJ and EI were both right there with the Amperex, some differences were not clearly discernible between the 3, certainly not enough to justify a 10x cost differential! The SP16 IMHO is not a good enough component to burn up really good tubes in, anyway.
The differences from tube to tube was not as great in this component as others, surprisingly enough, but I found the EH tubes were clearly the worst by a large margin: less detail, wooly bass, rolled off highs, dark and distant sounding. These are the stock tubes - you won't believe the improvement when you yank them.