New Reissue tubes...Good/Bad???

[bereanbill]

Seems like the Sovtek/Reflektor factory has reissued every venerable vintage valve there is (was?)...Tungsol, Mullard, Gold Lion, you name it. Anyone have any experience with these tubes ? I think some of the current production tubes rival vintage models: Sovtek's 12AX7LPS are great...SED Winged C 6L6s sound good too. So how about these reissues?

[Eli Duttman]

New Sensor's Saratov, Russia, plant seems head and shoulders above other current tube producers.

Feedback from the field is highly complementary about all 4 (KT66, KT77, KT88, N709) "reissue" types with GEC labels.

Good "noises" are also evident regarding "TungSol" EF806s and 6V6s.

Be sure to buy from a reputatable dealer who tests, matches, culls, etc., with care.

[Wavebourn]

I would like to see reissued GU-50...

[lowtherdream]

Originally posted by Wavebourn
I would like to see reissued GU-50...

I would love to see the C3o return

[Wavebourn]

Originally posted by lowtherdream


I would love to see the C3o return

Nice tube.

[ixe13]

Hi,

In my pair of Quad II, (2 power tubes each).

I use saratov KT66, JJ6l6GC, Electro Harmonix 6l6GC, And finaly the gold Lion KT66.

I bought all of them matched, and within 6 months, the bias started top drift a bit on all of them except for the Gold Lion .

Not much, about 3 to 4 mA.

The Gold Lion has about 7 months so far and the bias is exacly the same as when I first start to use them. Ok, one of them, shifted 1mA. They were very closely matched to start with.

They all had about the same number of hours of use when I checked the bias.

As far as the sound goes, honestly all of them sounded good to me with not much difference betwen them except again for the Gold Lion... it was like I switched on a loudness button on both Amp. The Gold Lion sounded "tighter" overall...

I know It's not a very scientific account, but I thought that it must say something about them...

So I went and bought the Gold Lion KT88 for the Simple SE I finished 2 mouths ago...

The only thing I'm wondering about, does it justified the difference in price? I'm afraid that there is a bit of hype about these re-issues. Or they realy take care when building them and the production cost goes up...

But as you can see I'm a sucker and I bought them anyway

[Panicos K]

Originally posted by bereanbill
Seems like the Sovtek/Reflektor factory has reissued every venerable vintage valve there is (was?)...Tungsol, Mullard, Gold Lion, you name it. Anyone have any experience with these tubes ? I think some of the current production tubes rival vintage models: Sovtek's 12AX7LPS are great...SED Winged C 6L6s sound good too. So how about these reissues?

Have they reissued all these,or just write the names on a totally different thing than the originals?Is this the real meaning of reissue?

[bereanbill]

Originally posted by Panicos K



Have they reissued all these,or just write the names on a totally different thing than the originals?Is this the real meaning of reissue?

That was the actual point I hoped my question would get to. Even using original design parameters. how near to the actual item are they? Take speaker reconing for example. Is the identical paper used in the recone as was used originally? How about rewinding older guitar pickups or transformers for that matter...is the same wire , bobbin, insulation material, etc..used? If not, what effect on performance and sound does this have? I guess my point is this...as is Panicos K's point: How far removed from current production are these "reissues"?

[Panicos K]

Not an expert at all,but having studied New sensor's tubes when I was looking for some types for personal use,I would say that I was able to notice three different approaches New sensor uses for their tubes.First,there are some types like Sovtek 5881 for example that are almost identical to the older Russian Reflector 6P3S.This shows that perhaps Sovtek branded tubes are based on the older Russian types.Second,when some minor "improvements" over the Sovtek types are made these are adopted to the slightly more expensive Electro Harmonix versions.And third,we have the current versions of all the old names like Mullard,Genalex,Tung-sol etc...where the effort seems to be the closest copy possible of the originals.Now,the question is ,can just one factory in Russia do all things successfully?IMO,no,because if they can do it now,then they should have been able to do it back then,when all the old famous names tubes,were considered as superior to the old Russian types.On the other hand I don't think that New sensor's worry was to make superior tubes than famous NOS.This cannot be easy,because the machinery used back then played a vital part to the final quality of the tubes,as did the know-how and technology of each manufacturer.I'm sure there are more reasons why old tubes can still be considered as better,but this is beyond my ability to know.I wish luck and success to all new tube manufacturers however,because no one wants to pay such high prices for NOS tubes.I think this will take some time though

[m6tt]

Really the quality of many of the NOS tubes comes down to metallurgy as much as it does geometry. Even mirroring the geometry of a vintage tube may produce something much better or much worse, it's the cathode material, grid wire(s), and plate material that can play a large role in the sound & durability of the tube. The burn-in procedure and level of vacuum are equally important. That being said, I've heard good things about the reissues.