preamp tubes for Marshall 1987 style amp

napalmdeath said:
EH 12AX7 Dark? They're about the brightest, grainy tubes out there! Goes to show we all hear things different. Tungsols are nowhere as bright as an EH. The Tungsols are bright, but not like an EH. No way.
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Definitely shows how we all hear things differently cause I just swapped between Tungsol, Chinese 12ax7, JJ, Bejing 6n4 square foil getter, EH 12ax7 and don't notice a whole lot of difference in a particular amp. Tubes just don't produce an inherent "tone" or eq curve to my ears. They don't have more mids, or more lows, or more highs. They always react with minimal change to eq or tone in various amps to my ears. An eq pedal in the loop has 1000% more tonal effect than any tube. Just my experience. You folks that hear specific frequency differences between tubs have far better hearing than I do.
 
MetalHeadMike said:
Definitely shows how we all hear things differently cause I just swapped between Tungsol, Chinese 12ax7, JJ, Bejing 6n4 square foil getter, EH 12ax7 and don't notice a whole lot of difference in a particular amp. Tubes just don't produce an inherent "tone" or eq curve to my ears. They don't have more mids, or more lows, or more highs. They always react with minimal change to eq or tone in various amps to my ears. An eq pedal in the loop has 1000% more tonal effect than any tube. Just my experience. You folks that hear specific frequency differences between tubs have far better hearing than I do.
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I think if you rolled tubes with vintage amps, you'd notice a much bigger difference. Newer production amps typically don't react as much as vintage amps to tube changes.
 
harddriver said:
I was tube rolling a couple of weeks ago with my combo 2203 amp and I just happened to throw this new unused older EH tube that was in my stash into V1 and then popped in an old unused JJECC83 circa 2008/10 into V2 so maybe that is taming the brightness of the EH but I don't hear it as any worse than a 2022 production Tungsol that I recently got or the 9th generation Ruby AC5's I was running in V1 prior in the same amp.

I was running those Ruby 9th generation Chinese AC5's in V1 and V2 and they were definitely brighter. I also find my 2009/10 Tung Sols to sound better than the 2022 ones I got recently and that was disappointing so as with anything YMMV......:dunno:

The NOS Tungsrams sound interesting for V1.:2thumbsup:
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I would think those later Tungsols would sound different being made in Chinese factory vs Russian factory. Materials must be somewhat different at the very least. Ruby tubes I never thought sounded as good as just the plain old generic Chinese 12ax7b’s, they must be the same tubes just specifically selected to whatever they look for. These Runy Hg’s were all I could score at the time so making due. They are ok.
There are some vintage tubes that I am saving for vintage amps, but have been happy with these chinese in higher gain stuff.
 
Racerxrated said:
I think if you rolled tubes with vintage amps, you'd notice a much bigger difference. Newer production amps typically don't react as much as vintage amps to tube changes.
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I tube swapped power and preamp tubes in a 79 JMP 2204 years ago Tom and didn't notice a huge difference tbh. I remember chatting with ya on that one. And also swapped in a 79 Mark IIB and didn't notice significant difference. Maybe its just me.
 
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