12ax7 taste testing

[krash]

Well I have a big pile of 12AX7s and decided to give them all a whirl in my GDS 18W combo.

I tried some Telefunkens, EICO/Mullard, Matsu5hita, my Sovtek 12AX7WXT+ tubes, a GE-JAN 5751 or two, and whatever else looked interesting.

So far what I like is a Telefunken in the Tremolo channel (very airy, can get crisp, shimmery and very chimey ... gorgeous, lowish-gain, not a lot of crunch), and the EICO/Mullards in the other two slots (Normal, and PI). The 5751 sounded hard and brittle, kind of splatty, in the vib channel and I didn't try it in the normal channel. The Telefunkens are a but whistly and buzzy in the normal channel. The 12AX7WXT+'s are still among the best all-arounders and I think I might like them nearly as much in the trem channel but the trem channel oscillates with a WXT+ in it and the amp on "10", intermittently ticks and pops, so I think that high-gain tube is too much for the trem channel.

I would say the 12AX7WXT+ still sounds a lot like a Telefunken to me but with a fair amount more gain, maybe a more whistly top end. I was surprised at how much I liked the EICO/Mullards. I was also surprised to not like the 5751 in the vib channel. Some of the diffs were night and day and some subtle. The 12AX7WXT+ are very good in V1 and in V2 (PI) and together turn the amp into a crunch machine but there's some kind of upper-midrange texture that the Mullards do better.

IMHO!