low noise 12AX7's

[Dmoney]

yooo!
whats a good readily available low noise 12AX7.
lower the noise the better!

im after some spares for my sommatone. i usually use a mix of JJ 12AX7's.
some decent 6550's might be cool too



A friends of mine has an amp (not sure what) with a low frequency hum issue.
any causes of low freq hum you can think of? apparently its kinda loud.


EDIT: i usually get tubes from hotrox or watford valves.

[Twinfan]

JJs work for me.

[hunter]

With JJs I always feel a lack of openness and higher frequency content, but for noise they are good.

If I were you I'd look into TungSol 12AX7 as well as Ruby Highgrade (or TAD RT010). I also like the Penta Chinese that you can get from Dougstubes. A recent discovery I did was the Penta GT12AX7M, which is the GrooveTubes Mullard Reissue selected by Penta. Got a bunch of these cheap on ebay and like them for their meaty tone.

In the Steavens I now run a GT12AX7M in V1 and TungSols in the rest, a Chinese G9 in the Phase Driver.

I am also interested in 6550s and not sure which are best. They are freakin expensive though.

[jpfamps]

Noise will vary considerably in any batch of valves, so often vendors will select valves for low noise (at an extra charge!!), although it is very hard to find out how this is done, or whether this is relevant to guitar amps.

Practically this means that  there will be good and bad examples of all brands of valve.

Eg, until recently I've had very good results with EH-12AX7s, however latest batches of these valves have not been so good in terms of noise, and speaking to our vendor there seemed to be a problem with all of the Russian valves with a spiral filament (which includes the Sovtek 12AX7LPS and the Tungsol 12AX7), which makes me thing there was a QC problem which affected all these valves. Hopefully this will be sorted out.

As a result we've switched to using the JJ-ECC802S, which seems a good valve. We've had less good results in the past with the standard JJ-ECC83s, both in terms of noise and reliability, although this again could have been down to a bad batch.

Thus whilst it is possible to generalize about various valve brands, variation within batches can have a significant effect on your experience of that valve.

[Twinfan]

we've switched to using the JJ-ECC802S, which seems a good valve.

That's my default, the red label ones.  In some amps I have the gold pin versions.

[Dmoney]

i usually use gold pin JJ's in V1 and PI and the standard ecc83s' in the elsewhere.

i went for gold pin JJ for PI, red label ones for V3 and V2 and a tung sol gol pin for V1
got some winged C 6550's also.

[HTH AMPS]

i usually use gold pin JJ's in V1 and PI and the standard ecc83s' in the elsewhere.

i went for gold pin JJ for PI, red label ones for V3 and V2 and a tung sol gol pin for V1
got some winged C 6550's also.

Winged-C- 6550s are great for br00talz.  I put some in my mate's 2204 and he's been gigging them solid for a couple of years now.

[Elliot]

I have had great luck with New Sensor 'Mullard' branded 12AX7s available on American Ebay and the EL84s in this series are by far the current production best EL84s I have used.

[Alex]

The Sovtek 12x7WA (the A means lowest power) is very quiet and low noise. It is also quite undynamic and sterile, but with highgain you might not care about this too much.

On my 5150 I simply went with a low noise JJ in the end. I also have that JJ803S  somewhere in there (5 preamp tubes after all) or whatever it is called, that tube is thicker and more compressed.

[Dmoney]

i had a reissue mullard in V1 when i got the amp.
it was microphonic, which i guess may have been cause during shipping.

I'm going to stick with the JJ's. I got a gold pins for the PI and V1 because I want them balanced.
the input gain stage is a parallel triode stage a la matchless lightning. so i want a nice low noise balanced 12AX7 in there.

[Pete24v]

a friend of mine has just put these in his Fender Deville and they sound great, low noise and more open sounding than JJ's, not he cheapest though!!

http://www.techtubevalves.com/valves/e813cc.php

[Elliot]

How does a gold pin lead to balance?  I thought all gold did was to prevent oxidisation in the connection - so you could leave the tube/plug in the socket without feat of damage to the contacts.

(this is a genuine question not a rhetorical one btw)

[hunter]

a friend of mine has just put these in his Fender Deville and they sound great, low noise and more open sounding than JJ's, not he cheapest though!!

http://www.techtubevalves.com/valves/e813cc.php

Did he put them in all stages? That must be expensive.

I'd love to hear some feedback from someone who tried one of these in e.g. V1 of a highgainer..

[Pete24v]

yeah, there are only 3 pre amp tubes in the Deville, V1, V2 and PI. And the amp already had fitted some sort of rubber shock absorber around V1 & V2 (my old blues deluxe had it too)

[hunter]

yeah, there are only 3 pre amp tubes in the Deville, V1, V2 and PI. And the amp already had fitted some sort of rubber shock absorber around V1 & V2 (my old blues deluxe had it too)

So the British tubes need a damping ring to not become microphonic, is that so?