Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

[guitfiddle]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

Yeah, but they used to do it in the old days too. It helps to educate yourself on what different tubes look like internally if you're really looking for them. Sovteks, SED and JJ are all pretty easily identified if you know what they look like. And nothing looks like an RFT or a chinese preamp tube.

Word.

I visited the guy known as Lord Valve in Denver a while back for some tubes for my Ampeg Jet...he said the brand name on most tubes, even the NOS US stuff, is probably about 50% of the time just that...a brand name put on some other tube.

The main difference is that back in the day, they threw away the tubes that were too far out of spec...nowadays they just pair a turd with another turd and then give it a really low or high rating.

Gawd, I'd love to have ten minutes alone to raid LV's tube stocks...he must have ten thousand NOS tubes in that store.

 

[Lake Placid Blues]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

Uh, Teles and RFT were not relabeled anything. Sometimes RFT were labeled as Siemens, and oddly, Telefunken. Sometimes Teles were labeled with various US names, but they were not made by other companies.

......

Both Siemens and RFT inherited tube manfacturing from a German electronics firm called GEMA. GEMA was a small company that invented radar in the 1930s. That made them a competitor with Telefunken, who also developed radar technology in Germany. GEMA originally bought tubes from Philips in Holland but as their needs became more specialized they had to design and manafacture their own tubes. They became very good at this with some 6,000 skilled employees. As World War Two came to a close GEMA was shut down by the victorious Allies so that it could not lay claim to secret radar patents and royalties wanted by British and American firms and their militarys. GEMA's assets were absorbed by Siemens in West Germany and by RFT in East Germany. Siemens and GEMA had developed a close relationship during the war. RFT was the name given to the remaining company assets in East Germany when it like all private industry was taken over by the communist government.

 

[Koreth]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

Word.

I visited the guy known as Lord Valve in Denver a while back for some tubes for my Ampeg Jet...he said the brand name on most tubes, even the NOS US stuff, is probably about 50% of the time just that...a brand name put on some other tube.

The main difference is that back in the day, they threw away the tubes that were too far out of spec...nowadays they just pair a turd with another turd and then give it a really low or high rating.

Gawd, I'd love to have ten minutes alone to raid LV's tube stocks...he must have ten thousand NOS tubes in that store.

Word.

When my amp took a spill a few months back, I took the NOS preamp tubes I'd been running into him to have the tested to make sure the shock hadn't made 'em microphonic. Afterword I stuck around a bit and asked him some questions. That man has forgotten more about tubes than I'll ever learn.

 

[PVFan]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

JJ & SED both get rebranded by GT, Mesa, TAD, Ruby and Harma too, so they all get rebranded in a way.

I really, really, really, really don't believe that to be true even a little.

Please confirm?

 

[some_dude]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

I really, really, really, really don't believe that to be true even a little.

Please confirm?

 

[PVFan]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

what's that? It says mesa? I've got some of those? what are you saying?

are you trying to re-confuse an already confusing topic?

you just toppled an entire debate because you didn't understand what you were replying to

 

[PVFan]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

I can try again.

King Izzo,
I don't think JJs and SEDs get rebranded. Can you confirm that, please? Thanks.

 

[some_dude]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

what's that? It says mesa? I've got some of those? what are you saying?

Do you have any JJ ECC83s? If you do, hold them up next to your "Mesa" and compare the two.

 

[PVFan]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

I don't. Could you just spit yer point out?

edit:

ah. You edited after I replied, so I am not gonna get a clear, bold statement, am I? just an implication.

You are saying JJs get filtered by Mesa. I didn't know that. Still don't "know" that.

That leaves SEDs. Izzo?

 

[some_dude]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

I don't. Could you just spit yer point out?

The Mesa is a rebranded JJ....

 

[PVFan]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

you mean, it looks like it is.

 

[PVFan]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

think you got yer answer though.

It is: "no"

 

[King IzzO)))]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

GT 6L6GC-S are JJ, those Mesa 12AX7 are JJ, TAD, Ruby and Harma all relabel JJ.

TAD 6L6GC-CVET are SED, as were the Mesa STR-454, Ruby relabels them also but openly acknowledges what they are, don't recall the designation right off the top of my head though.

 

[PVFan]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

GTs could be anything

TAD and Ruby are Chinese according to everyone I know and every tube website I've been to? I guess I'm not surprised. I can't believe anything else in the world either. Let's add this to the pile of lies.

So can we all agree at this point that there is no making sense of any of this? Except that anyone who swears by a brand of tube should be ignored? Which is how I've felt before we started 15 tube brand threads? Can we put this down?



edit: stupid fudgin tubes anyway

 

[eggman]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

Howdy,

Think I'll play it "safe" and stick with JJs or the old cheap and reliable (if not exactly great-sounding) Sovteks. YMMV.
One thing's for sure: My Gibson LP Special (w/ SD Vintage P-90s) sounds fantastic through my Carmen Ghia. Come to think of it, that guitar sounds great in just about any amp.

 

[Koreth]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

I have five JJ ECC83S tubes. The guts of that Mesa branded 12AX7-A are identical. If it walks like a duck, and talks like a duck, odds, are, it's a duck. If a tube with a Mesa label has identical guts to a tube manfuactured by JJ, it's more likely than not that the Mesa tube is a rebranded JJ. Especially when you consider that Mesa is completely open about the fact they don't manufacture their own tubes, but instead test and screen tubes made by others.

This is nothing new when it comes to tubes. I've got a Made in Canada Marconi 12AX7A short-plate with what's left of the markings of Westinghouse. I've got a General Electric 12AX7 long plate with another logo on it that isn't GE. Tubes made by one company with another company's logo on 'em have happened and continue to happen all the time.

 

[PVFan]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

This is nothing new

right, it's not. But EVERY SINGLE TIME the topic of current production tubes comes up, it gets 10,000 times more confusing. Maybe King Izzo makes charts of this sh!t and hangs them on his walls for intensive 24/7 scrutiny but I can't keep none of this straight, and here, at last, is the chance for which I have been waiting, yearning, longing, undulating, squirming:

every time some sumb!tch and his keyboard rolls up in this joint and says Oh Hai guys I just dropped one of the new Tung-Sol u76r c8fiy reissues in my phase inverter and swapped an EHx for my V1 and now my amp sounds so much more chimey and bullsh!tty that all I can think of is punching throats and committing many, many murders -- or how bout this lovely: Oh hai, replaced the output tubes in my 87njyoy with new! whatevers and now my amp is -- shut the chocolate fudge up you walking inanity, you just replaced the engine in your car of course it's gonna sound different. Yes I liked an LPS in V1 once upon a time and then another time I didn't, or a 12ax7-WB or whatever it was that was so great in '01 but not '02. Seriously shut up! Nobody knows jack taco from tube to tube, ever, and eleven people are gonna read this and start a thread about how tube X is great or has anyone tried it just to call my bluff on my murdering of them, which I won't actually do, but about which I will daydream.

this is so old. I'm starting to think the whole NOS business is lies, too.

in a baking oven, one muffin says to the next, "Gettin hot in here." The other muffin replies, "Holy crap! A talking muffin!"

 

[PVFan]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

never saw Lynch, nor Schenker before, until tonight.
I can't talk about this anymore.

 

[ken361]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

Probably better off with Mesa i think they test there tubes over JJ but i did have a preamp tube go out with in 15 seconds.My Engl came with 2 extra Engl labeled JJ I tried it in the v1 but it didnt sound to good loud. I never cared for the JJ short plate, just dont know what people see in them. I have many NOS and newer production some amps will respond different to tubes. I like my Amperex in the v1 its a clean smooth sounding tube, the Mullard RI high gain makes a good v2 tube to push your gain up for added bite for distortion.

 

[Koreth]

Re: Can someone explain this whole TAD tube thing?

I can't talk about this anymore.

Then don't.