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What is the best place to buy tubes?

What is the best place to buy tubes? I've read several threads on Audiogon listing many tube stores, but where can you get quality? I bought tubes from Tube Depot (listed many times here) and paid extra for matching. Not only weren't they well matched but 1/3 of them were bad, so I suspect the tubes I received weren't actually tested. Then they sent replacements, but half of those tested bad. I bought matched sets from The Tube Store, but they were so poorly matched that the distortion was worse that the old tubes they replaced. I've bought from equipment manufacturers (CJ, ARC) and found they do good testing and matching, but their prices are very high. Is there any place to get tubes that are matched well and of good quality? Thanks.
holos
olimpico
33 posts
 
Andy at Vintage Tube Services. Great guy, great tubes.
arkprof
182 posts
 
Nothing but excellent service and tubes from thetubestore.com ... just my experience
ghosthouse's avatar
ghosthouse
3,718 posts
 
Wow...interesting. I've had 2 JJ Tesla KT88s from the The Tube Store fail at ~400 hrs and ~700 hrs. When I wrote them about the first failure, they indicated expected life was >1000 hrs and I must have gotten a bad tube. I thought it was just my bad luck.

I also paid extra for matching replacements from The Tube Store only to find the "matched" replacement wasn't "plug 'n play" as advertised. Give that biasing is not a big deal on the 502B JoLida, not a problem BUT something other than advertised.

Holos- Thanks for your post. "You don't know what you don't know"!

Order fulfillment from Doug's Tubes was very fast but I can't yet comment on quality.
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newbee
4,093 posts
 
Ghosthouse,

FWIW my experience with Tesla tubes, E34L, KT 88's and KT90's has been poor. I've had many failures due to quality control and stopped using them - Got tired of having to replace resistors in the amp when these tubes shorted out. I understand my experience is far from uncommon. I also find their small tubes somewhat unreliable, noise wise and otherwise, but their cheap so I still use them when I want their tonal balance.

This quality issue has nothing to do with The Tube Store, although they could just stop selling them I suppose. Jeeze, just a 1000 hour life! No comment on the matching service - if they fail at this, they are not alone! I've gotten some bummers from others as well. Caveat emptor.

FWIW.
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