Originally Posted by
Bloozcat
Expensive little buggers, aren't they?
I've got a six of the GE JAN 12AX7WA's that I picked up before the great price rise. Paid $12.95 ea. for them. They're great tubes. Not as warm as the RCA, but they have a sweet top end. I like them in Fender amps, especially as a substitute for 7025 tubes, which are getting rare and very expensive.
Now that you have the RCA, you ought to try picking up a few new production tubes to compare to it, like the Tung Sol reissue and the Mullard reissue. The EH is an other one along with the Penta 12AX7 which is a select Shuguang 9th generation tube. Or you could just try one marketed as a Chinese 9th generation tube. It's good to put away a supply of NOS if you can afford them, but we'll all have to find substitutes for them soon enough. Trying new production tubes now while you have the NOS to compare them to, will make finding a close substitute easier. Trying to recall what a tube sounded like from memory is a lot harder than hearing them side by side.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention...You ought to pick up a few JAN GE 5751's while they're still at or below $20.00 ea, if you haven't gotten some already. They're great in overly hot pre-amp stages where you might want a little less gain.