Appreciate the post. Always good to know who not to do business with.
Vacuum Tube Snake Oil Salesmen
Just a mini rant to complain about vacuum tube suppliers (not all but most) and their false advertising.
I ordered a set of 4 matched 2A3 Acme tubes direct from PSVane for my Woo Audio WA33 as an upgrade. They cost close to $1k all together.
When I got them I checked on my MaxiMatcher2. The boxes said 65mA but with correct operating voltage and bias set on the tester I could only get 2 of them up to 43mA. One other read 39mA. And the last one was an internal fault short which could have damaged my amp had I not checked them.
I asked to return one "Matched" set for replacement. The PSVane customer service would only offer to send me one tube and not a matched pair. They would not pay return shipping to return one set. Instead they demanded I smash the bad tube and send them a picture. Has anyone ever smashed a large vacuum tube with a hammer and seen where all the pieces of glass fly to? I said no way. I will throw it out or return it but I am not going to risk cutting my hand doing that. So they refused to send a replacement.
While I had the Maximatcher out I decided to go thru some other tubes I had in my spares box to check them (purchased before I had the tube tester). I could not believe the results. Some tubes matched by well known vendors were off by as much as 30% from each other.
It is really a good investment to get a tube tester if you will be a regular user of tube amps.
If you must buy PSVane then get them from Amazon and not direct so you have some safety to return them.
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https://forum.audiogon.com/discussions/psvane-discussion-impressions-thread?highlight=PSVane What does psvane (above thread) have to say about this? |
A similar thing happened to me with Psvane. In my case it was a smaller tube that went noisy. I never tested them. I was told they didn’t want their defective tubes somehow finding their way back in the marketplace. It was also easier for me to smash the tubes than waiting the additional time before a replacement set was sent. In my mind it was a trouble free process that was handled by Psvane in a professional manner. |
Yes if you are comfortable doing that. I guess the larger 2A3 was a bit of a concern for me because I have 2 dogs and was worried some glass might go flying on the floor and they might step on it. I was also holding my ground on getting a matched pair replacement. I would have even paid the return shipping on the other good tube. When I got the Maximatcher II and MaxiPreAmp II testers I was really shocked how much we are being lied to. There is a USA tube selling company that matches tubes. I have two quads of EL34s from them I bought a couple years ago and have not used yet. I looked at the labels on the boxes. Every tube has the exact same test result for gain and transconductance written on the box! Not possible. When I checked them one set was within 15% of each other and the other set had one tube off by 20%. It is fraud.
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- 63 posts total