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Re: scruff >>whining is fine: just that history of RCA is no better. Longevity however is les

Ironically RCA marketed the same tubes under their label as well. I have a good handful of RCA/Yugoslavian tubes that are identical in construction to the current EI.

I picked up a case of current production EI 12AX7's a few months back. If you're willing to toss 75% of them, you can come up with some very nice tubes. My experience is that half were junk, of the other 50% perhaps 20% had good balance between sections. GM tells a small portion of the story. You've got to see the tubes on a curve tracer. Man, some of these EI 12AX7's have really wild and bizarre curves, especially near cut-off. By comparison i've rarely seen a telefunken or early RCA that didn't have pretty nice curves.

For me the economics just didn't work. By the time I cull thru 10 tubes to find a nice pair I might as well just pay for NOS. I suspect that the Elite series is a lot more selected than bulk EI tubes, and might be a better deal.




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  • Re: scruff >>whining is fine: just that history of RCA is no better. Longevity however is les - Gary Kaufman 03/15/0311:58:29 03/15/03 (0)


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