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OK... so tell me about 12AX7's

G

Greyandy

pfm Member
Hi Hive Mind,
I'm looking to change the 12AX7's (ECC83's etc etc.) in my Icon Audio PS1 MkII and looking for recommendations.
It came with Electro Harmonix's and having never tried anything else in it these are the current baseline. Maybe these are as good as it gets (I suspect not...) and as ever am searching for audio nirvana.
I know when it comes to valve recommendations, it's a very personal and subjective thing but would welcome peoples thoughts about possible options.

Thanks in advance!

Andy
 
Tube rolling is something you just need to go and explore. No one can really give any credible overview of 70 years worth of valves, though most of us do end up preferring old UK, US and European valves e.g. Mullard, RCA, Telefunken etc, though the good ones come at a price. The problem with ECC83s, amongst many other types, is you are competing for rare old valves with guitarists hunting them for vintage and new guitar amps. There is a finite supply and they keep going up in price. I’m lucky that I accumulated a lot over quite a long time, but you can guarantee in such a marketplace they will never be as cheap as they are today again. This market only moves upwards as supplies diminish. No one can make say a 1958 Mullard ECC83 again. The knowledge, materials, skills etc are lost to time.

If you deep-dive this it is a very long and deep one, e.g. don’t think of each vintage brand as being one thing, they each changed design multiple times and often used different manufacturing plants, so a 1958, 1960, or 1963 Mullard ECC83 are a very different valve even if they all happen to have been made in Blackburn!
 
The only thing I would add is that it can be circuit dependant. The tube in the first position on my ST20 for example seems to have a far greater impact on sound than the other two ECC83/12AX7s.
 
I have limited experience but I'd say not all 12AX7/ECC83 are interchangeable either. My dealer put Electro Harmonix EHs in my amp when it was serviced and the noise floor for me was unacceptable. I went back to the Chelmers that were in there before.
 
Buying small signal valves (eg ECC83/12AX7) in particular is a complete minefield unless you clue yourself up.

Many barnds are exactly that - they (have) never made a valve and when they existed in number, they bought from the cheapest supplier and that cheapest supplier could be any of the major REAL manufacturers - in Europe Philips, Thorn, Siemens, Telefunken, Tungsram and E Germany (under a few names). I have Pinnacle (UK distributor) branded valves made in the US by RCA, so................................
All of the major manufacturers also owned numerous brands - Mullard is a Philips brand, just as an example, and they all supplied each other as business suited, including different factories - you can find Mullard branded valves made all over the place, including Ei (Yugoslavia, as was). Some had particualr tie-ups - Thorn (Brimar amongst other brands) and Tungsram, for instance.

Buying old valves is a total minefield. Even here you will get people who offer CVC (Chelmer Valve Co.), Pinanacle, or Bentley, or Zaerix, or Orion, or............... valves as the best since sliced bread. They were all distributors, never made a single valve in their history and will have sold valves madde all over the place by various manufacturers as suited.

An awful lot of late-made valves, as they were replaced by transistors, were made in E Germany and were supplied to most of the major names, including the manufacturers, such as Thorn and Philips.

After WW2, Philips set up most of the Japanese valve industry, so Japanese brands are very largely Philips designs - Sharp, Toshiba and the like.
 
If you want to buy new, rather than vintage, I’ve been very impressed with PS Vane Art Series. £80 a pair from Hotrox, and noticeably better than the generic ones they replaced. No doubt rare and expensive old stock would be better. But sometimes I just want to order something brand new, and have it delivered.
 
I was looking at a few old ECC83s the other day and noticed some branded ones had shiny silver plates a bit like the letter E inside. A bit of research showed they were rebranded Chinese 6N4J valves so I'd just advise your not to buy any that look like these.

www.ebay.co.uk

12ax7B ECC83 Vacuum Tube for Guitar Pre-Amp Amplifier | eBay

Low-noise 9-Pin 12AX7B ECC83 Vacuum Tube. 1 Piece Vacuum Tube. We'd like to settle any problem in a friendly manner. Size: Approx. Because the unpaid dispute will not be closed automatically, and we may ignore it.
www.ebay.co.uk
 
This site contains affiliate links for which pink fish media may be compensated.
CTank said:
If you want to buy new, rather than vintage, I’ve been very impressed with PS Vane Art Series. £80 a pair from Hotrox, and noticeably better than the generic ones they replaced. No doubt rare and expensive old stock would be better. But sometimes I just want to order something brand new, and have it delivered.
Click to expand...
Have already ordered a pair of these!
 
Tony L said:
Tube rolling is something you just need to go and explore. No one can really give any credible overview of 70 years worth of valves, though most of us do end up preferring old UK, US and European valves e.g. Mullard, RCA, Telefunken etc, though the good ones come at a price. The problem with ECC83s, amongst many other types, is you are competing for rare old valves with guitarists hunting them for vintage and new guitar amps. There is a finite supply and they keep going up in price. I’m lucky that I accumulated a lot over quite a long time, but you can guarantee in such a marketplace they will never be as cheap as they are today again. This market only moves upwards as supplies diminish. No one can make say a 1958 Mullard ECC83 again. The knowledge, materials, skills etc are lost to time.

If you deep-dive this it is a very long and deep one, e.g. don’t think of each vintage brand as being one thing, they each changed design multiple times and often used different manufacturing plants, so a 1958, 1960, or 1963 Mullard ECC83 are a very different valve even if they all happen to have been made in Blackburn!
Click to expand...
I've fell down the rabbit hole of tube rolling with 6SN7's some time ago as my pre and power amps use these, so painfully aware of what a minefield it can become!
 
I had a Icon Audio PS 1.2 mk1 MM valve phono stage. It came with a pair of JJ ECC83s and an JJ ECC81s. I put Full Music ECC83's into it and lived with it very happily for well over 10 years. They're good, if you can find them.

I'd suggest that the pair of ECC83 valves is where to start rolling. I think the single ECC83 at the back is acting as a driver. I'm sure someone will correct me if not ;-)

I replaced the Icon with an AI P2 which has long been my dream phono stage.... it is also stocked with JJ ECC83s and JJECC82s and sounds very good.:)
 
I have loads of 12AX7 tubes, about half tested. Includes 2 nice Amperex ones and several Mullards, though not closely balanced. I'll be selling all of them. I'll make a list and post it. Open to PMs. Andy
 
Greyandy said:
Hi Hive Mind,
I'm looking to change the 12AX7's (ECC83's etc etc.) in my Icon Audio PS1 MkII and looking for recommendations.
It came with Electro Harmonix's and having never tried anything else in it these are the current baseline. Maybe these are as good as it gets (I suspect not...) and as ever am searching for audio nirvana.
I know when it comes to valve recommendations, it's a very personal and subjective thing but would welcome peoples thoughts about possible options.

Thanks in advance!

Andy
Click to expand...
Hi Andy, do you have your messages/conversations switched OFF?
 
Psvane's arrived this morning and are currently running-in. A bit thin sounding but won't make a judgment until they have a few dozen hours on them.
 
As I imagine you now know, this can be a ruinously expensive business, and you may find yourself trying to chase down a nice Mullard mc1 at some point.

I suggest you drop Icon a line, and ask whether in fact your PS1 is likely to benefit from tube rolling. As someone has said earlier it is circuit-dependent. I had an Icon amp some years ago, and contacted Icon about tube rolling. The reply from David Shaw was along the lines of don't bother, as he designed the amp with local / global negative feedback which essentially nullifies putting in different valves of the same type. Note that I'm not an expert on this sort of thing, and I'm going from memory, but that was the general gist.
 
Sorry, forgot to say: if there is value in rolling the ECC83s then the current production Genalex Gold Lion ECC83 / B759s are reputedly good.
 
Hmm... Tim de Paravicini supposedly thought tube rolling pointless in his designs... and yet changing v1 (a 12AX7/ECC83 - kindly provided by Locheeboy, a man who knows his valves 👍) had a marked effect on the sound of my EAR 834L preamp which was entirely positive in the context of my system.
 
I have two Croft Micros, one with an ECC82 cathode follower output, one with two 12BH7 push-pull output, both with MM stage..
The latter sounds much more impressive than the former, but I have two reasonably smallish boxes of ECC82, ECC83 and 12BH7 and probably all equivalents, which cover quite a date range and from pretty much all manufacturers except Telefunken - I bought them all NOS a few years ago and would not pay the insane Telefunken price then, let alone now.
I have also bought current production valves, but sold them on and can't remember what they were labelled or who manufactured them.

I am unconvinced that I can hear any difference between different valves in any position. Sometimes I kid myself that on prolonged listening, some valves are less "fatiguing", sometimes I tell myeslf that it is total blox and I really am kidding myself.

The Croft MM stage is pretty much the same as the EAR.

Given that I have the valves, and even though I have no desire to swap out the Croft, I am sometimes tempted to buy a pre in which people insist that different valves have a major effect, just to discover what I am missing (or not).
 
I’ve always liked RTC (Philips) ECC83s. Those were cheap, while I could I stocked a few. They will last tens of thousands of hours anyway.
 
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