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What is the best place to buy tubes?

What is the best place to buy tubes? I've read several threads on Audiogon listing many tube stores, but where can you get quality? I bought tubes from Tube Depot (listed many times here) and paid extra for matching. Not only weren't they well matched but 1/3 of them were bad, so I suspect the tubes I received weren't actually tested. Then they sent replacements, but half of those tested bad. I bought matched sets from The Tube Store, but they were so poorly matched that the distortion was worse that the old tubes they replaced. I've bought from equipment manufacturers (CJ, ARC) and found they do good testing and matching, but their prices are very high. Is there any place to get tubes that are matched well and of good quality? Thanks.
holos

Showing 1 response by holos

holos OP
9 posts
 
Wow! Thanks for all the replies. There are some great suggestions here that I will try.

I agree that I can't fault a retailer for the bad tubes from a manufacturer knowing that several manufactures of tubes have quality control issues. But I cannot excuse a retailer when you pay them to pretest their tubes only to find that what they delivered is still bad (and probably not actually tested).
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