Buying (New) Tubes On Ebay (Non Mesa Tubes)

[jeff5]

I'm going to re tube my 290 and am trying to save a few dollars by buying my tubes on ebay. I'm focusing on reputable buyers and new tubes, but am a bit concerned about bias. Do the tubes need to be biased to mesa's specs or am I okay with going with this approach? Do sellers like doug's or the tube store, etc. adjust or only sell tubes with mesa specs? I'm just not sure how the whole process works and don't want to blow my amp or something bad like that. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[MrMarkIII]

Any Mesa labeled tubes will work in any Mesa amp. Period.
There are different colors assigned to each tube (Green , Blue, Red, etc.) but the colors are used to match two tubes into a working pair. Virtually all power tubes work in pairs. The idea is to get two Green , or two Red, or two Grey. This is preferable to a pair consisting of one Red and one Green, although your amp will not blow up if you do this.

You don't "bias tubes", you bias the amp.

With Mesa tubes, they set the bias in the amp, then they test a boat-load of tubes to match their amps. Mesa thinks this is better than buying some random pair (still matched to each other, by the way) then having a tech adjust the amp to fit the tubes. Some think this is a marketing gimmick to get you to buy only Mesa tubes. However, any reputable seller, such as you mentioned, can sell you a matched pair (matched quads are unnecessary), as long as you tell the seller what amp you have.

 

[jeff5]

Thanks! I am actually looking at non mesa tubes like Ruby's. Am I at risk putting those in? Do vendors like Doug's actually match to mesas specs and am I better off just going that route?

 

[jeff5]

Any thoughts on buying non Mesa tubes on ebay or the like? Again, they will be new, just a brand like Ruby, etc. Am I taking a big risk here?