gold lion 12ax7 , au7

Hi Leatherneck1812,

I am very interested in your comparison between reissue Gold Lion 12AU7 and RCA Clear Top. I love the later for its "magic" midrange and rather good highs and bass.

Please continue to update us (me..) with the results.

Thank you in advance,

Simon
P.S. I did this comparison and I will share my results when you will report yours (to avoid any bias)

its all perspective, and it drives me crazy sometimes, I have RCA cleartops , bought them from rogue, the test well but are bright and edgy in my system. I dont like them at all.

Its all perspective, and it drives me crazy sometimes, I have RCA cleartops , bought them from rogue, the test well but are bright and edgy in my system. I dont like them at all.

I've been wondering if a factor that might contribute to the variability of different people's assessments of dual triodes (aside from the obvious variables of systems, rooms, music, listening biases, etc.) is the degree to which the two sections of particular tubes may have differing characteristics, and variations in the degree to which different circuit designs may be sensitive to that.

As I mentioned above, in the case of the absolutely NOS 1957 RCA 5963's that I had been using, while the different tubes were well matched to each other, there were significant mismatches in transconductance between sections. Different circuit applications, obviously, will have differing sensitivities to that.

As you saw, Chris, I had raised that question in this thread, in a post dated 8-25-2010. Kirkus provided an excellent technical response, but there was little empirical feedback.

Best regards,
-- Al

Thanks AL. I have been frustrated in the past with most nos tubes I have tried. When I first got into tubes the whole NOS thing was fun, but I just keep hearing different things than what most people were saying about them. alot of them were let downs, especially for the price of NOS. I have tried mullards, telefunkens, mazdas , GEs, 5751s, RCA cleartops, amperex , just to name a few, and none blew me away, and most sounded worse than the new production tubes I had on hand. It kinda bummed me out.

Update:
Another 12 hours on the Genelex ECC82s. They have really opened up. Soundstage is wide and deep. Texture, imaging, bloom, microdynamics in spades. Voices and instruments are extremely well seperated and background harmony blends so richly into the foreground. More air around instruments than I have ever had. The highs are still ever so slightly sharp after a few hours of listening, but I am hoping this will settle out with some more time.

Al, I had always had some slight crackles in female voices(congestion?) in a few passages on only a cpl of CDs. That is completely gone now.

For right now I am impressed with these tubes. PS: I am running them with the Black bottles not the Gold Lions