SPAX7's in Mark 5 25

[Monstercastle]

So I cut an order for 6 SPAX7 and a pair of EL84 from Mesa to have a full set of spare Mesa branded spares in stock for my new Mini-Mark. I have a lot of other tubes in stock (all new production) that I use in my other amps, but I'm not going to play the tube rolling game with my new Mark. I'm quite happy (flipping ecstatic actually) with the tones with all the stock tubes, but I'm curious about the following:

1) Does Mesa ship the Mark 5:25 with an SPAX7 in V1 or just a normal tested tube? If I pull the chassis to check, I might as well wait until the SPAX7's come in and just swap them in at the same time. If the SPAX7 are quieter, I'm fine putting them in all slots, but hey, if it ain't broke....

2) The EL84's in my head appear to have the same structure as the new production EL84M, or military version capable of higher plate voltages. Do the Mark 5:25's run higher plate voltage over the 300 limit of the standard EL84? I'm assuming that Mesa EL84's will work fine in a Mesa amp, I'm just curious what Mesa ships when you buy a matched pair today. The site just says "Russian" which is where the new production Sokteks are made, but that could be one of several Russian variants.

I did a few searches, but didn't find what I was looking for. Hoping you all may have some insights.

~Doug

 

[jmontgomery]

The answer to your first question is the Mark25 comes with the plain Mesa 12AX7s.