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

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.

Yep, I think we're on the same page too Detlof! Thanks for the clarification and no need to apologize...no offense was taken in the first place.

Cheers!

Thanks Jax2, Newbee, Detlof... Impressive amount of information on tubes! Tubes were totally unknown for me. But I have learned a lot for the last two days (I think I have, that is...). 1. NOS are USUALLY better than current production tubes; 2. NOS are many times fake BUT there are some dealers we can trust (like Jon) 3. Power tubes need to be matched. Preamp tubes also but it seems to be not as important as for power tubes. The same for NOS 4. There is no such thing (as there isn't for all audio matters) like the best tube. It will depend on the system and, of course, on personal taste. Nevertheless, within the ECC82 family, models like Amperex 7316, Tesla ECC802S, Sylvania GB-5814A or Siemens ECC82 seem to be worth a listen. So, I have one more question: according to your personal taste, and considering the tubes listed above or other, which ones do you like the best? And still one other remark: I do apologise for my English... Thanks!