need 6V6 recommendations

[lovedat800]

They were just temporary ones i made just to test and see if i liked 6V6. Octal sockets with 2" pieces of 18 gauge solid core wire soldered to the necassary pins that i just bent to go into the appropriate pins of the 9 pin sockets.

[teletroy]

the brimars rule, just wish I bought more of them when they were 45 a pair instead of 90!

[lovedat800]

I just read that watford test. Guess i may be changing my mind. It's just one man's opinion, but it sounds like the JJ's are the ones to get after reading this. The tung sols are from what he says the same tube as the EH !

[sub]

I never tried Tung-sol or EH 6V6, but here what i read on tubestore site:

"The sound is better defined than the Electro Harmonix with less compression than EH or JJ."

what i tried is TS 12AX7 and this tube isn't same than EH 12AX7.

[lovedat800]

Well, after that read i ordered the JJ's. As good as all the reviews are they may not be my fav if i did a side by side listen, but they can't possibly be mediocre with all those raves. And heck, they''re zaphod's fav so i know i done good. they also seem to be very robust, and the louder and cleaner the tube the more i'll like it.

[guitarmike2107]

the JJ "S" designation is for their "Spiral Filament" .... Whatever that means
I guess its supposed to heat up quicker or be more rugged?

Pg 5 of RDH gives some info on filament types, apparently double helical (spiral) filaments are best for applications where hum might be a problem .. dont know why though

[zaphod_phil]

Maybe similar reasons to why heater wires are usually twisted....?

[demonufo]

Hmm, I'd have gone with the Tung-sols. You'll notice that review is three years old. They're not the same as the sovteks anymore, I'm fairly sure.

[guitarmike2107]

Maybe similar reasons to why heater wires are usually twisted....?

doh .. just had that same thought while cutting my grass

[porge]

Although a late reply, I've had a lot of tone-tasting with 6V6's in the past, and went through a phase of buying a lot of them. My favorite 6V6 out of many tried (including vintage RCA's, Tung-Sols, Mazdas, Hewlett-Packard, New EH, JJ) would be some NOS JAN brown-base 6V6's I came across about 5 years ago. In double-blind tests with friends in a champ circuit, they sounded sweeter in clean tones, and great distorted.

just my .02c

[I360UP]

Got both the the TS6V6 and the JJs. It may be the set I have but the TS are a little warmer than the JJS, but, the JJs seem to have a little more defined tone. I've got a single channel AB763, 6V6Plexi and both of seem to keep getting the JJs put back in them. I love the why they break up. My 5E3 has old stock in it.

YMMV

[BooBird]

Porge, JAN stands for (Joint Army Navy}, They did'nt make tube's, these are tube's that were bought for the military and stamped JAN, now for the good news, all military tube's were normally of a better grade and quality than your store bought tube's, some were called 4 star tube's !
tube manufactor's back in the old day's could have got an order from our military for 10,000 6L6's and on hand at the factory would only have maybe 2,000 of thier tube's in stock, they would call G.E. or RCA and buy 8,000 un branded tube's, then they would put thier name on the other manufactor's tube, this sorta made it confusing to figure out who's tube's we would be describing, the reason for a company having a shortage was mostly due to the tooling up process, most old tube company's would tool up for say a 12AX7 and run that tube for a year before retooling for another tube, it must have been quite a drug out process switching over to another size tube !
at one time in my life i owned 450 K of these old military tube's, I can tell you this much, in thirty or so year's of messing with tube amps, the tube is one of the most important part's of finding your tone, try all the brand's you can afford to own, and alway's let your ear's decide what sound's best, and last but not least, how long can you run the tube ? I have 60 yr old tube's running in A class that i would'nt take love or money for, the old tube's are getting very hard to come by now, and are getting very expensive, i have been useing some of the newer tube's as of lately, some sound A.O.K., Some don't !
We are in a time where you gotta go with what you can get !
And if you love tube's like i do, be glad we can still buy a new tube, they tol us 30 yr's ago that there would be no tube's after the turn of the century !

Boo

[morcey2]

Boo

Just looking at the picture, I only have one thing to say. I hate you. With the passion of a thousand "Where's Waldo" characters. Speaking of which, you ought to lay those out in a random pattern, take a couple of overhead pictures and call it "Where's the I65-code, incorrectly-labeled, Baldwin-Branded, Philips ECC83?"

And then forget to put that tube in the picture.

Matt

[BooBird]

Matt, that would be Funny !
on my old PC i have Pic's of my old shop, the rafter's were open and all those tube's were boxed and setting on runner's down through the rafter's, guy's would look up and see them and go, how many tube's do you own, my best answer was, I really don't know ?
when i sold them the count went to 390 K ! and i hung on to enough to keep me happy till the end !
The funny thing was, no matter how many tube's you own, there will allways be the odd tube you don't have, i really had a lot of fun playing with the one's i did have though !
but there come's a time when the old hand just won't hold still and the old eye's just can't focus on the lil stuff, so now i leave it up to young one's to carry on the tube amp building.
on my good day's i still get a little done. i've been working on this for a spell, it's 4 X EL84's, hope to finish it and get some mp3's up over on P/P.

Boo

[chabby]

JJ's are okay, they used to be better than they are right now. Funny, I have an RCA Blackplate in V4 of my 5E3 and a JJ 6V6 in the V3. The RCA came out of a 70's SF Champ I bought a while back. I have no idea how old it is, but its a killer tube and makes everything I've put it in sound great. I have a some great old Hammond EL84 pulls I got out of an old Hammond organ. They are of unknown origin exacpt they say "Made in Holland" on the black base. Also have a bunch of 12AX7's from the same organ.

I can't say enough about that RCA tube, it's a tough little sucker with thick glass and about 1/2 the size of the JJ. Its the exact same size as the RCA 5Y3 I have that I also pulled out of that champ. You're probably wondering what I put in the Champ. The answer is nothing. I rotate that tube set between the Deluxe and the Champ minus the JJ 6V6 of course. I may cry the day those two RCA's croak on me.

I paid nothing for them as they just came in the Champ I bought from an old guy that didn't ever play it. It looks almost like the day it was made. Exept I pulled the cap can out and recapped the main filters which dramatically improved the tone, so I'm glad I did. Part of me wanted to leave the can in real bad. But I knew the amp would benefit with an improved filtering system.

[Plexi]

It probably depends on what voltage the tubes are running at, or how hot someone is biasing them. But, the old RCA, Sylvania,Raytheon,and a long list of good 6v6s.
The JJ have held up great for current made tubes,i hope they don't go down hill on quality, they are very good for taking higher voltages.

[chabby]

Actually the term "good" and modern or current tubes production just can't be put together-lol! Even the ones that seem okay like the JJ 6V6's (which I like) are a stretch to call good. The technology and equipment and individual knowledge of the craft is gone...long gone. That is why nos tubes are better. Its really not this corck sniffing craziness penny pinchers like to say it (myself included). The old tubes are superior in every way to anything produced today. Doubt that will ever change unless a helluva lot more people start buying tube amps-lol!

Thank God the Military had so many dang tubes, or we'd probably already be out. I'm lucky in that all the nos tubes I have I got free. People with no awareness of tubology left them in older amps that I've purchased over the years. Some of those tubes I've had over 6 years and they still are working at a high level, especially the 9 pin tubes. I f you ever get a fender tweed amp you will come to appreciate nos tubes, especially in amp requiring a 12AY7. What cracks me up sometimes is people will sned me an amp to re-tube and I'll look inside and wonder what the heck they are thinking. One tube goes out and they want to replace the entire set!

Musicians..... That where the term "pulls" comes from-lol! Techs get "pulls" from people that don't want their old tubes anymore. At least that's one place "Pulls" come from. Guys will go out and buy an old blkack or silver face Fender and hear folks tell them they should replace the tubes "in that ol thang" and they do it not knowing that often times many of the tubes will still be fine. That's happening less and less these days, but it still happens regularly around here. Among modern, current production tubes the only ones I really can stand are 6V6's and EL84's. Oddly eough the Chinese tubes are some of the best current production tubes in the last 2 years. I buy Mesa tubes alot for standard stock offering around here and have yet to get a bad one. They are the only modern, current tube I can say that about right now. Mesa has a QC deal with the Chinese that is actually adhered to in China before the tube ever gets over here.
That along with the reasonable price has me buying lots of Mesa's right now (with JJ hitting the skids in QC lately.......GT too.

I've had bad luck this year with Svetlanas too. The only power tube I haven't used much of lately is EH but I have used a few of their preamp tubes. Vox is using them as standard in their production amps I think now.
VHT (the old VHT) is using the too. Carr and Bogner both still use Svetlana's as stock. Fender was smart to gain control of a tube maker. With as many disposable amps as they are building and selling these days they need all the tubes they can get. The Hotrod series is the largest selling tube amp for Fender and the largest selling tube amps in history..

I won't accept them for repair anymore though and know a few other people that won't either. Ive taken in a few botched repair jobs on hotrods by other people and that's okay because those are usually complete board replacements.

[nyazzip]

...is it the "tube's tone", or the impedance match-up between output tubes and output transformers and dampening with speaker cabs? i remain unconvinced that the tube alone is responsible for as much of the tone as it is given credit for.....at one time i was convinced that i knew what el34s "sounded like"...i proved myself wrong.

[demonufo]

Since this thread got resurrected, it might be an idea to mention that tubetramp (or Sgt Overdrive as we know him over here) is selling quads of Sylvanias for just $65. Also RCA, Raytheon, Tungsol and GE's. But I like the Syl's nowadays, and they seem to handle higher plates than other NOS too.

[colossal]

Since this thread got resurrected, it might be an idea to mention that tubetramp (or Sgt Overdrive as we know him over here) is selling quads of Sylvanias for just $65.

I got some very nice JAN/CBS 6V6GTs from the Sarge a few years back. Was running them in a 6V6 Plexi with 440V on the plates; they sounded great.