Tube rolling selections?

[AndyKubicki]

Middlecreekguy's post prompted this one. I have been loaned a box of 12AX7s to audition before I buy consisting of a few pairs: Mullards, Bugle Boys, Telefunkens (both smooth and ribbed plate), and JJs (as well as comparing them to my original EHs). So far, the differences have been extremely subtle. So far, I have only done this in the line stage, so maybe my CD player has something to do with this? I just got my disk cleaning stuff from Needle Dr. and will clean some LPs this weekend, so I will test the phono stage as well, but I don't think my cheap Scott TT will be such a good source with the tone arm hum I'm getting, it's definately a more noisy source.

My music selection has been the Rite of Strings with Stanley Clark, Jean-Luc Ponte & Al Di Meola. This is mostly acoustic with bass, violin and guitar as well as some synthesized guitar.

Also tried some live music with Jean-Luc Ponte live at Semper (?), where there is a full band with electric bass, percussion, keyboards.

Any recommondations as to a type of music to try, or any special way to listen? I am also trying to determine which are the least noisy tubes.

I should have asked you guys this a long time ago!

[Dale W]

I posed the same question to a good friend of mine at a very high end audio dealer and he sent me home with a reference recording of

" symphonie fantastique BERLIOZ KOJIAN utah symphony " op .14

just about every passage on this cd goes totaly silent as the symphony rises to a grand climax ( play on words lol )

This cd gives you a chance to find out what if any noise is present when no insterments are active and will test the balls of your amps. More than once it had me running to the volume control.

My conclusions were the RCA Black plate 6sn7's in my pre-amp were crap and replaced with some NOS GE gtb's real fast.

Next step was the 12au7's in the driver boards of my amps were changed to some NOS mullards as well as the 12bh7's ( to RCA's from a pipe organ pre-amp section).

If you are critical enough to spend the time rolling and listening then you will indeed find some slight changes but it takes some serious time. My own amps sound great to " my " ears , and i'm tuning them to what " I " think they should sound like .

Remember none of us are likly to agree on the perfect sound , you'll need to find what works best for " YOU ".

DALE

[ShapeShifter]

The type of circuit within your preamp, amp or integrated also has a big influence on how a tube will sound. Tubes do not always convey the same sound characteristics or signature from one circuit to a differing one. There are definite benefits to be gained from using a good NOS tube over their latter day siblings. As Dale said, your ears alone are the best indicator of what sounds best for you.

Below is a link to a past thread that contained some good info and discussions regarding Telefunken, Mullard, RCA and other makes of 12AX7's.

Link Works now.

<http://forums.klipsch.com/idealbb/view.asp?topicID=11200&forumID=68&catID=19&search=1&searchstring=&sessionID=%7BFFC212A5-81B2-456B-81E5-D9E9D5479445%7D>

[Randy Taylor]

Hi!

A while back I was doing a little tube rolling and found in my Pilot 232 that RCA Blackplate 12ax7's sounded the best to me in this amp, I tried the telefunken and other Euro tubes and found that this tube was more musical and detailed and just plain sounded better. You might want to pick up a nice pair from the mid 50's and give them a shot, you might be very surprized.