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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
ckorody
640 posts
 
Brandon at TubeWorld is extremely knowledgeable and stands behind his product with a money back guarantee.

So does Brent Jesse at http://www.audiotubes.com/.

As does Dennis Boyle at Chimera Labs who does not have as wide a stock but can often hook you up with great tubes at lower prices. Great guy to deal with.
http://home.att.net/~chimeraone/tubesaleslist.html

With all three guys the knowledge and advice is top notch, product is great and packing and shipping are fast.
ghosthouse's avatar
ghosthouse
3,718 posts
 
Newbee -
Don't mean to beat up on the Tube Store if it's the manufacturer's quality issue. Also, just to be clear... the expected life/hrs they cited for the power tubes was well over 1000. When writing last night I couldn't remember the exact number so I just wrote >1000. It might have been in the range of 1200 or 1500 hrs. In any case, I expect they were being conservative though, as you can see, 2 JJ Tesla KT88s never made it nearly that far.

I did buy Ei Elite 12AX7s and NOS Mullard 12AT7s from them and those are still working just fine.

The Tube Store order fulfillment service has been great though I was not impressed with their matching service.

I didn't really appreciated that a tube failing suddenly could cause damage beyond a blown fuse. Thanks for the warning.
mf2
24 posts
 
I have had great experiences buying from Jim McShane and Brendan at Tube World. Both are highly reputable sellers who know tubes.
jw94055
125 posts
 
www.tubemonger.com is my recommendation. Maybe not the source for the overpriced, exceedingly rare, overrated, name-dropping tubes; but, if you like reasonably priced, mighty fine tubes, check it out.
sherod
1,681 posts
 
Yes, I forgot about Tubemonger. Very reliable dealer. I bought a matched quad of NOS Siemens E84L from him about a year ago and they are still going strong and sounding nice in my 1959 Pilot 402 receiver. I bought a quad of Penta Labs( cherry-picked Shuguang) KT88 tubes from Dougstubes, and not only does he measure and test properly, he labels each tube with the test results, packs them well with free shipping, USPS Priority, and followed up with e-mails to make sure that I was happy with the tubes. Talk about great customer service!
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