New Tungsol 12ax7s sound great

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motorboy1

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Bought one for my Splawn quickrod in the 1st stage gain position. Tried a bunch of different tubes, stock Shunguang 12ax7b, Ruby 12ax7c, JJ, Ruby HG, 90s Sino w/ square getter, RFT, Genelex gold lion, usa rca 12ax7, EH and some others. Was never completely satisfied with the gain structure, too bright, too muddy, etc. so bought a current Tungsol with balanced triodes for only $25 and to my ears this tube sounds great. Nice gain, even frequencies, sort of 3D sounding. Anyone else try these and digging them?
 
motorboy1 said:
Bought one for my Splawn quickrod in the 1st stage gain position. Tried a bunch of different tubes, stock Shunguang 12ax7b, Ruby 12ax7c, JJ, Ruby HG, 90s Sino w/ square getter, RFT, Genelex gold lion, usa rca 12ax7, EH and some others. Was never completely satisfied with the gain structure, too bright, too muddy, etc. so bought a current Tungsol with balanced triodes for only $25 and to my ears this tube sounds great. Nice gain, even frequencies, sort of 3D sounding. Anyone else try these and digging them?
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Always nice to hear a good review for new tubes. The nos malarkey is about as bad as used JMP prices now. 🤣
 
I’ve used one in V2 of my Splawn Super Sport for years . Sounds really good there
 
I've heard these are indeed good sounding. Modern production pre tubes typically sound flat/sterile in my amps. Older Tungsram/Chinese usually work best for my Marshalls.
I may have to pick up a couple of these and give them a try.
 
My experience with the Tungsol 12AX7's is that IMO they were the best CP pre ive had except for a few early Chinese.
Ive had some TS last over 5 years and a couple crap out after just a couple weeks.
 
I had them in my Nitro. They were high gain, and bright... But I felt they had this high end scratch to them I couldn't get rid of unless I turned down the presence control to almost it looses it's brightness. I also found the gain on it to be not as smooth, had a lot of aggression to it, which combined with the Nitro aggression, it sounded too much.

Just what my ears heard.

I went back to the JJ E83CC tubes in the Nitro.
 
My experience as well. I found them scooped out with a bright/toothy presence that made them really thin sounding. Honestly at the bottom for me as far as current production 12ax7’s. Don’t understand the hype, but I understand it’s amp dependent. My favorite new stock is the EH7025
 
Bash_Man said:
I had them in my Nitro. They were high gain, and bright... But I felt they had this high end scratch to them I couldn't get rid of unless I turned down the presence control to almost it looses it's brightness. I also found the gain on it to be not as smooth, had a lot of aggression to it, which combined with the Nitro aggression, it sounded too much.

Just what my ears heard.

I went back to the JJ E83CC tubes in the Nitro.
Click to expand...
I used one years ago and agree it was bright almost harsh sounding. Don’t know if they changed something in the current ones or if its maybe the supposedly balanced triodes they are selected for, but I wasn’t expecting much, and as soon as I installed it I liked what I was hearing…
 
My Hagen came with them and they sound pretty good, no desire to change them out for now
 
We are talking about new batch Tung Sol right?

Because yearsssss ago I hates the brittle bright tung sol in anything especially a v1....

If they have gotten their act together I'd be willing to trust again.
 
Zado said:
I've been quite curious about these too, how do ya like em?
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I like them my self. They have a smoother gain overall tone. Plenty of gain. Definitely no where as dark is the JJ ECC83S or whatever their standard 12ax7 tube is. They seem to add a bit more mid/high-mid, which helps cut through even more.

For the price, you can't go wrong grabbing 1 or 2 to try.

Cheers.
 
JJ makes good tubes. Had great success with them. I still have some KT88, KT77, e34l, GZ34, and preamp tubes by them are good. Some say darker but I think they aren't brittle is another way to say darker. I think it depends on how you dial your mids and highs at the end of the day.

DIEZEL has used JJ for reliability on power amp (next best thing since they have supply issue sometimes here & there) pretty sure KT77. The TAD are great. I miss the black plate 6l6 they did before the redbase. They sounded soooo beefy in a SLX.

Anyway, those JJ tubes have been...
Good tubes when you judge today's standards.

Places like mesa also rebrands jjs in certain situations.
 
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