Mullards - the holy grail of tubes?

[Uk Ant]

I've recently received into my possession some mullard valves (for free, which is nice). There's a couple of ecc83's and a bunch of ecc82's.
So I swapped out some of the tung sol and JJ's from my little mesa express and had a play.
Now the mesa is not the best amp for doing this sort of swapping as each valve is shared between the two channels, but as I don't have a simpler amp to hand the mesa will have to do.
Now if you were to purchase some NOS (new old stock) Mullards they'd cost something like £50 each (about $75), so to re-tube most amps it would cost you and arm and a leg. But the question is, if you had the means is it worth it?

First lets talk about the ecc82's. In american speak these are 12AU7's, a lower gain variety of the ECC83/12AX7. Now I tried these in a few locations. First in the pre-amp stages, then the phase splitter stage and also the reverb pre-amp.
Now in the pre-amp stages you get much less gain, so for those who only take your amp to the edge of crunch at best these may be just the things for you. Not as useful for me as I do like a good range of drive and these just didn't cut it.
Many like to use 12AU7's in the phase splitter stage as they give a cleaner, purer signal path. Problem is they also reduce the output, so in a little 30w amp there just wasn't enough left to really be heard above my drummer. Now for those of you with more heavy duty amps who'd like to drive you power tubes more without complaints from the rest of the world one of these may be just the thing.
The one in the reverb stage was more useful. The Mesa's reverb was always a little heavy handed and only a small amount o the dial gave far too much. The little ecc82 now means I can more accurately control my reverb, which is dead useful.
Now, the ECC83's are the ones of real interest, and I wish I had more of them to play with. Now I'm no expert but what I can say if the Mullards are much smoother and warmer than most of the modern valves I've used. The tone really is much sweeter without going muddy or indistinct.

So would, if I had the money, buy these in the future. The simple answer is yes, but the cost is high. The full cost of re-tubing my mesa, including power tubes, would be over £300 ($450 say) which is a lot of cash but I still think it would be worth it.

 

[the guy who invented fire]

Re: Mullards - the holy grail of tubes?

No NOS tube is the holy grail...

I could go on for days about NOS tubes but know this walking in the door.

First, many new amps simply sound better with new tubes...they are designed with new tubes in mind plus a lot of amps being made today dish out more voltage than many of the old tubes can take.

Second, there are more fake NOS tubes out there than there are real ones so only buy NOS tubes if you really know what you're doing...a buiddy of mine recently got burned on some NOS 12AX7's...long story short he shelled out big bucks for $45 worth of tubes...

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: Mullards - the holy grail of tubes?

Check out this article from my blog! Talks about this very subject, including many sound clip comparisons. I own LOTS of old stock valves, and there is actually a modern made valve that sounds VERY close to the cherished Mullard tone, but you can listen to the clips and determine that for yourself if you like ...

 

[TwilightOdyssey]

Re: Mullards - the holy grail of tubes?

No NOS tube is the holy grail...

I could go on for days about NOS tubes but know this walking in the door.

First, many new amps simply sound better with new tubes...they are designed with new tubes in mind plus a lot of amps being made today dish out more voltage than many of the old tubes can take.

Second, there are more fake NOS tubes out there than there are real ones so only buy NOS tubes if you really know what you're doing...a buiddy of mine recently got burned on some NOS 12AX7's...long story short he shelled out big bucks for $45 worth of tubes...

This is 1,000% correct.

 

[wahwah]

Re: Mullards - the holy grail of tubes?

I started buying up vintage tubes in 2003, and I focused most of my attention on early 60's Blackburn plant Mullard ecc83s, and mid to late 50's blackplate RCA 12AX7s. I also bought up quite a few pairs of 50's RCA blackplate 6V6GT's for my Super Champs. In the process, I also tried tubes from several other Golden Era manufacturers, including original Tung Sol, GE and Sylvania on the American side, and various Philips, Amperex and Telefunken tubes on the European side. With some help from my amp tech (Dave Ulbrick, at the time) I was able to educate myself as to exactly what I was looking for in vintage tubes.

It became obvious early on that there was no need to look for NOS tubes, because the longevity of these vintage tubes meant that a good, slightly used tube with 90% of its life left in it was still going to last for quite a few years, making their relative cost excellent value compared to most current production tubes. I generally paid around US$20 per tube for the 12AX7 varieties, and I now have a nice collection of the best of the Mullards and the classic RCAs.

In 7 years of searching, mainly on eBay, I have only ever received one set of fakes. They were sent from Hong Kong, and I immediately demanded a full refund and got it. I have never seen any attempts at faking RCA's, but I have seen and heard of attempts to fake Telefunkens and old shield logo Mullards. What the fakes don't have is the chalky date codes of the Mullards, with the etched 'B' for Blackburn.

It is true that many modern amps will not benefit from vintage tubes, because they were built around $0.25c current production garbage from China or Russia. But with a vintage amp or even a vintage design, the right vintage preamp tube can be a wonderful, cheap 'mod' to an amp, substantially improving the overall tone, detail, dimension and clarity. The basic rule of thumb that I have found is that Mullards work best in Marshall or Vox style amps, and RCA's work best in Fender style amps, which makes perfect sense, because these were the original tubes used in the iconic versions of these amps that created their legend in the first place.

Here's some of my personal stash...the best of the best. Early 60's Mullards, which would have come stock in the earliest Marshalls (including Jimi's) and late 50's RCA blackplates, which would have been in the first tweed Fenders.

Cheers........................................ wahwah

 

[King IzzO)))]

Re: Mullards - the holy grail of tubes?

My amp likes some tubes more than others, and it's got a cascading high gain structure. You can't make a blanket statement that tubes don't matter, that's dumb. Maybe it sounds fine with regular Sovtek 12AX7B in it, but it could still sound better without a tube with inherent fuzz and peaks and a lack of clarity, regardless of what tube it was designed around. If you're happy with the way it sounds with those tubes, great.

I would not pay what some people want for NOS tubes though.

 

[Gearjoneser]

Re: Mullards - the holy grail of tubes?

I think Wahwah is right about amps being designed around tubes, and sticking with the original formula.

However, I don't have deep pockets for NOS tubes at premium prices, so my experience has been to acquire them somehow....either from raiding old audio equipment or yanking them from amps that luckily came with them. Otherwise, I'll just buy the best of modern. Most likely, THOSE will someday be NOS, because who knows what the future holds?

This year, I got lucky when it comes to free Mullards. My boss bought a whole lot of vintage movie cameras, just to have them chromed for display. I raided them all for 12AX7's and EL-84's. I even found a Telefunken in the bunch.

My modern amps don't need them, but I have fun popping them into my Matchless.

 

[Red_Label]

Re: Mullards - the holy grail of tubes?

Check out this article from my blog! Talks about this very subject, including many sound clip comparisons. I own LOTS of old stock valves, and there is actually a modern made valve that sounds VERY close to the cherished Mullard tone, but you can listen to the clips and determine that for yourself if you like ...

Very cool! I couldn't hear the difference between the JJ and the Mullard in the side-by-side clip that you posted on the results page.

 

[wahwah]

Re: Mullards - the holy grail of tubes?

Check out this article from my blog! Talks about this very subject, including many sound clip comparisons. I own LOTS of old stock valves, and there is actually a modern made valve that sounds VERY close to the cherished Mullard tone, but you can listen to the clips and determine that for yourself if you like ...

The problem with this comparison is that the long plate Mullards were never the ones chosen for guitar amps, they were the chosen favourite of the hi-fi community. The tubes that Marshall and Vox were using in their earliest incarnations were the short plate (14mm) Blackburn Mullards, which are a different sounding tube to the long plates. They're the ones to make comparisons with on the British side of things. The amp companies always used what was readily available to them, and the long plate Mullards were well and truly phased out by the time Marshall made their first amps. By the mid 60's, short plate Mullards were what was available, and that's what went into the Marshalls and Voxes that made the classic tones that set the standards.




Cheers....................................... wahwah

 

[Uk Ant]

Re: Mullards - the holy grail of tubes?

No NOS tube is the holy grail...

I could go on for days about NOS tubes but know this walking in the door.

First, many new amps simply sound better with new tubes...they are designed with new tubes in mind plus a lot of amps being made today dish out more voltage than many of the old tubes can take.

Second, there are more fake NOS tubes out there than there are real ones so only buy NOS tubes if you really know what you're doing...a buiddy of mine recently got burned on some NOS 12AX7's...long story short he shelled out big bucks for $45 worth of tubes...

Ouch, but I suppose that's the risk you take some times.