212Mavguy
Well-known member
Stratbasturd is speaking sober truth. +1000 for his words. The more informed a buyer is, the better price/value ratio that can be gotten on the 'bay. Yes, tone is far more important than cosmetics, the sound comes from the guts inside the bottle, not the ink printed on it. Know the guts, know the typical tone those guts produce. Fun to learn through personal experience.
I'm sure I have had at least one very satisfactory transaction on ebay with him... my ebay handle is "nyrhd" and yes, it is possible to get very nice used tubes on ebay for much less than the so called NOS dealers. Just a brief comment on "10,000" hour tubes, ratings are one thing, longevity in a combo amp, particularly mid power and higher combo amps, like 10 class A tube watts and above is potentially greatly shortened due microphonics developing from the shaking the tubes recieve from the speaker(s). Another thing that contribues to early preamp tube death is the total number of on/off cycles a tube recieves during its service life. That causes expansion and contraction of tube parts, things loosen up after a while, and voila! microphonics ensue. Jim Marshall had a good idea when he first built his amps as heads sitting on top of a cabinet, but it also pays to put some padding material between that amp head and the cab it is resting on. Sometimes rubber feet on the amp head just ain't enough.
My experience with EI long smoothplate ecc83's in silver smooth plate and gray smooth plate is that they tend to become microphonic or have problems with microphonics fairly easily. I have owned at least a dozen of each. There is a difference in the tone of the EI long smoothplate versus Telefunken smoothplate, the EI's are more gritty in their overdriven tone than the Telefunkens. Telefunken smoothplates have glorious sounding cleans and wonderful control of harmonics when overdriven, smooth and sweetly complex. The best 12ax7/ecc83 tube I have ever experienced for resisting microphonic behavior is the RFT ecc83. Something about those very short plates, heavy bottle, and long mica spacer spokes all work together to that result, and the tone is wonderful in vintage Marshall amps to my ears.
Regarding Tesla ecc803s, the earliest versions were produced on the Telefunken ecc803s tooling, they are a box plate/frame grid design, light yellow printing, gold pins for the most part, and yes, they are strong, phenomenal sounding, and very long lived. I have at least a dozen, and they are my favorite tube for following another tube in an earlier position of a given amp channel, clean or dirty. They make wonderful copies of the original signal coming from the first tube, have no bad manners to watch for when pushed into the dirty zone. The longplate ecc803s Tesla is a later production tube. Another Tesla worth having is identical in appearance to the earlier ecc803s, box plate/frame grid, it is labeled as e83cc, with white printing, sometimes with regular pins, the early Tesla ecc803s frame grid/box plates have gold pins. The fakie Tesla labeled ecc803s sometimes found on eBay have darker yellow printing, gold pins, there is some shielding around the plates that makes it impossible to see between the plates, unlike the real ones, and the getter halo has only one support on top of the a-frame, also the fakies sometimes come in white, red, and black box. My real ones came in a yellow, blue, and white box, but the box is not the important part, is it? :wink:
Regarding Hickok tube testers, I have a Western Electric Cardmatic tester that Hickok made, I trust it for preamp tubes but for power tubes there is nothing better than matching for current draw at full voltage in a real amp circuit. I use a single ended heavily modded Fender silverface "Frankenchamp" to measure current draw from the individual octal power tubes I put in it, with a choice of cathode or fixed bias at the flick of a switch. Even my trusty Hickok cardmatic does not correlate very well to the kind of numbers I get from being in a real circuit, not even close. I test 6f6g, 6v6g, 6v6gt, 6v6gta, 5881, 5932, 6l6g, 6l6ga, 6l6gb, 6l6gc, el34, e34l, el38 (with a wire from pin 3 to a plate cap connector,) 807 with socket adapter, 6bg6g and 6bg6ga with a socket adapter, kt66, and 6550 in that amp.
A Maximatcher does a better job for power tubes due to the 400 plate volts it tests at than a regular tube tester. A regular tube tester uses much lower voltage and is not all that trustworthy compared to measuring current draw in a real world circuit at real world voltages.
As far as using Telefunken ecc83 smoothplate in a guitar amp, their mica spacers aren't all that beefy and it is a longplate tube, so be careful about what application they are placed in. I would not want to take a chance on shaking a bunch of them to death prematurely in a high power combo amp.
I'm sure I have had at least one very satisfactory transaction on ebay with him... my ebay handle is "nyrhd" and yes, it is possible to get very nice used tubes on ebay for much less than the so called NOS dealers. Just a brief comment on "10,000" hour tubes, ratings are one thing, longevity in a combo amp, particularly mid power and higher combo amps, like 10 class A tube watts and above is potentially greatly shortened due microphonics developing from the shaking the tubes recieve from the speaker(s). Another thing that contribues to early preamp tube death is the total number of on/off cycles a tube recieves during its service life. That causes expansion and contraction of tube parts, things loosen up after a while, and voila! microphonics ensue. Jim Marshall had a good idea when he first built his amps as heads sitting on top of a cabinet, but it also pays to put some padding material between that amp head and the cab it is resting on. Sometimes rubber feet on the amp head just ain't enough.
My experience with EI long smoothplate ecc83's in silver smooth plate and gray smooth plate is that they tend to become microphonic or have problems with microphonics fairly easily. I have owned at least a dozen of each. There is a difference in the tone of the EI long smoothplate versus Telefunken smoothplate, the EI's are more gritty in their overdriven tone than the Telefunkens. Telefunken smoothplates have glorious sounding cleans and wonderful control of harmonics when overdriven, smooth and sweetly complex. The best 12ax7/ecc83 tube I have ever experienced for resisting microphonic behavior is the RFT ecc83. Something about those very short plates, heavy bottle, and long mica spacer spokes all work together to that result, and the tone is wonderful in vintage Marshall amps to my ears.
Regarding Tesla ecc803s, the earliest versions were produced on the Telefunken ecc803s tooling, they are a box plate/frame grid design, light yellow printing, gold pins for the most part, and yes, they are strong, phenomenal sounding, and very long lived. I have at least a dozen, and they are my favorite tube for following another tube in an earlier position of a given amp channel, clean or dirty. They make wonderful copies of the original signal coming from the first tube, have no bad manners to watch for when pushed into the dirty zone. The longplate ecc803s Tesla is a later production tube. Another Tesla worth having is identical in appearance to the earlier ecc803s, box plate/frame grid, it is labeled as e83cc, with white printing, sometimes with regular pins, the early Tesla ecc803s frame grid/box plates have gold pins. The fakie Tesla labeled ecc803s sometimes found on eBay have darker yellow printing, gold pins, there is some shielding around the plates that makes it impossible to see between the plates, unlike the real ones, and the getter halo has only one support on top of the a-frame, also the fakies sometimes come in white, red, and black box. My real ones came in a yellow, blue, and white box, but the box is not the important part, is it? :wink:
Regarding Hickok tube testers, I have a Western Electric Cardmatic tester that Hickok made, I trust it for preamp tubes but for power tubes there is nothing better than matching for current draw at full voltage in a real amp circuit. I use a single ended heavily modded Fender silverface "Frankenchamp" to measure current draw from the individual octal power tubes I put in it, with a choice of cathode or fixed bias at the flick of a switch. Even my trusty Hickok cardmatic does not correlate very well to the kind of numbers I get from being in a real circuit, not even close. I test 6f6g, 6v6g, 6v6gt, 6v6gta, 5881, 5932, 6l6g, 6l6ga, 6l6gb, 6l6gc, el34, e34l, el38 (with a wire from pin 3 to a plate cap connector,) 807 with socket adapter, 6bg6g and 6bg6ga with a socket adapter, kt66, and 6550 in that amp.
A Maximatcher does a better job for power tubes due to the 400 plate volts it tests at than a regular tube tester. A regular tube tester uses much lower voltage and is not all that trustworthy compared to measuring current draw in a real world circuit at real world voltages.
As far as using Telefunken ecc83 smoothplate in a guitar amp, their mica spacers aren't all that beefy and it is a longplate tube, so be careful about what application they are placed in. I would not want to take a chance on shaking a bunch of them to death prematurely in a high power combo amp.
