Watford Valves Reports

[tot_Ou_tard]

This seems interesting:

http://www.watfordvalves.com/reports.asp

[M29]

Wow tot thanks for sharing! I will have to spend some time with this. Cool:AOK:

M29

[tot_Ou_tard]

I've now read some of the reports & it turns out that very expensive, hard to find, NOS tubes sound the best. ;)

Who would'a thunk?

[Bloozcat]

I've read all of the tube tests from Watford. I've found them to be informative and useful to a degree. They are very NOS biased, and for good reason - NOS generally sounds better. What's not so useful is that the reports are all a little old now, with few updates on the newer production offerings. With NOS becoming more scarce and more expensive, many will be opting for new production tubes. Reports on more new tubes would be helpful.

[tot_Ou_tard]

Are new production tubes getting any better?

[duhvoodooman]

Sure they are, as the outfits making them now build expertise and compete for the quality-conscious guitar amp market. There was a huge loss of industry expertise when the US and western European players pulled out 30 years or so ago. But the new players--mostly in eastern Europe, Russia and China--are coming on strong. Together with entrepreneurs like Mike Matthews (of Electro-Harmonix/Tung Sol/Mullard Reissue fame), there seems to be a real resurgence in new production tube quality. Good thing, too, 'cuz like BC says, the NOS stocks are dwindling fast....

[Bloozcat]

Yep, where there's a demand, there's always some entrepreneur ready to step in and fill that demand.

Mike Matthews at New Sensor (who DVM mentioned) has been very active in this market. Not only has he been buying the rights to some of the old line names like Mullard, Tung Sol, and now Genelex with the recently offered Gold Lion, but he's also made a committment to improving the quality of the reproduction tubes bearing these names. He bought the old Reflector plant in Saratov Russia and has revamped the production facilities there. The "new" tubes with the old names aren't merely relabled Sovtek's as many feared might end up being the case. Mike is reallly attempting to resurrect the old tubes as they were made in the past. So far, he's done a pretty good job of it. I can personally attest to the quality of the Tung Sol 5881's and the 12AX7's. They are great sounding tubes. Of course, time will tell as to how they'll compare to the NOS in terms of longevity, but at least for now we have the tone...and at reasonable prices too.

A by-product of Mike Matthews efforts is to pressure other new production manufacturers into raising the quality of their lines to compete for market share. There's some great tubes coming out of the Shuguang factory in China now, and companies like JJ in Slovakia have turned out some nice sounding tubes like their great 6V6's and 12AX7's.

So, we might lament the passing of the NOS era, but we're not souls lost in the wilderness at least. It just goes to show how big the musical instrument market is, that an old (and not so environmentally friendly) technology has been revived just to satisfy our needs.