Tubes ECC88/6DJ8? Need all the help I can get

But Imagine I am interested (not yet...) in a pair of NOS like the ECC802S. In this case, should I ask Jon to match the tubes? And is it safe to buy tubes from so far away(Portugal is the southest european country)?

Yes, if you are buying a set of more than one tube for a pre-amp it would be a good idea to ask the dealer for a matched set of tubes. Yes, you would request that specifically. There are good tube dealers in other countries and far and near. Some tubes are more delicate than others, but if packed well, in general, they should ship well by air. If you receive a tube shipment in the Winter when it is cold outside you should allow the tubes to acclimate to room temperature before using them. I've purchased several tubes from overseas sources with no incident and all tubes have tested well. I bought some tubes from someone who had purchased from a dealer in Hong Kong and those tubes were not only not matched well, but one of them tested bad (in need of replacement). The guy I purchased from ended up sending the two worst back to Hong Kong. I kept the other two from the quad. Those were GEC 12AT7's. Especially when buying tubes overseas you should definitely only buy from dealers who you know from reliable sources are reputable and will stand behind their products and service. You risk the hassle of an international insurance claim if anything is damaged, and for expensive NOS tubes it may not be worth the hassle. Shipping insurance in general is a royal PITA, and it's getting harder and harder to "prove liability" and get paid for a claim. This may be even more so with Vacuum tubes where damage is not always physically apparent. Shipping is obviously also more expensive from overseas as well. Portugal is indeed in the southeast of Europe....was that a question? It's a beautiful country! Don't know any tube dealers there though, that's not to say they do not exist. I'm sure that there are good and bad tube dealers in most of the industrial countries of Europe, just like there are here. Some of the more exotic NOS seem more readily available abroad, probably since most were manufactured there. The Japanese audiophiles love tube gear I'm told, and are a major consumer of tubes and tube hardware. They do make some pretty good tubes in Japan as well, but are also known as a major source of counterfit tubes too. Again, since you're new to tubes, I would stick closer to home for now and save yourself the potential hassle. Along with my recommendation of Jon through my many experiences buying from him, you can also find many recommendations for other good dealers, closer to you, on this forum as well as on AudioAsylum. Kevin Deal at Upscale Audio, as well as Andy over at Vintage Tube Services both have good reputations among those who have dealt with them. Kevin Deal does run a full service high-end audio store, and has been criticized on these forums (he has also received much praise here as well) for giving priority (rightly, IMO) to the products and sales that keep him in business, of which tube sales are only a tiny part. The upside of that, as I see it, is that he deals with a great variety of different components and knows about how tube selection affects specific components. Both Jon, and Andy are strictly tube dealers as far as I know. All they sell are tubes and tweaks. Jon has been able to give me excellent advice about specific components as well and was right on in his assessment. Again, I have no doubt that all three of these dealers could be a darn fine source for tubes and advice about tubes. I have no personal experiences to speak of with either Upscale or Vintage, but there have been many posts recommending both as excellent dealers. Any of the three will be able to sell you a matched set of tubes, and should be able to recommend specific tubes for you application.

Sorry if I should complicate matters: The advice so far is excellent as far a personal taste, listening habits etc are concerend. Also there is a definite advantage of the ECC802s over the ordinary brands of ECC 82s as regards tube life, freedom of microphonics, tube hiss etc. Generally they are built to such close standards, that matching them is most probably not even necessary if they are truly NOS. The Teslas are good tubes, but nothing really spectacular. You might just as well stick with the original ones. I would prefer the Telefunkens for silence, speed and a wonderful liquid midrange. They are hard to find though, but there are reputable German dealers who sell through ebay, they go for about 80-120 bucks a piece. At the moment there are a quad of Mullards for sale, which equal the liguidity of the Teles, but have a wonderful warmth as well, which gives female voices an extra shine. They are ultra rare, the dealer has good feedback and you can find them at http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3021220838&category=3284. They are probably worth while to look into. If you want the best, Teles and Mullards are the ones to go for, the Siemens are a bit cold and generally not so much liked by audiophiles...Cheers and happy listening,

I'd certainly defer to Detlof or anyone with extensive personal experience with the specific tube type you are considering. I don't think you complcate matters at all Detlof; I was not trying to recommend the JJ, but merely suggested that if someone did recommend it they were probably referring to the ECC802S version since it is supposed to be superior to the standard ECC82 they also make (from what I've read). Sorry if that came of as a recommendation of that tube over other options as it was not intended that way. As I said, I have no experience with 12AU7's at all so would not presume to know which was best and why. The only thing I might disagree with is that NOS tubes should be expected to match if they are "truly NOS" (or new current production tubes for that matter). My experience tells me otherwise. I have purchased sets of otherwise identical NOS tubes both from overseas dealers (Tele E88CC's as well as the GEC's I mentioned) to find out they were certainly not matched. Perhaps 12AU7's are different in that respect(?). Regardless, please correct me if I'm wrong here, but I was under the impression that it was far less important for these smaller pre-amp tubes to match up closely than it is to match up power tubes for amplifiers(?).

Jax2, I am in complete agreement with you and apologise for being unclear as far as the matching of those NOS tubes is concerned. What I had in the back of my mind was exactly what you had stated at the end of you post, that contrary to the matching of power tubes, the matching of preamp tubes is far less important and that generally in the range of the ECC 803s and 802s tubes, if from the same batch, differences are slight and certainly not noticeable to my ears at least when listening to music.