Tube quality....whats good/bad?

[daz]

I've been out of the loop for a while, so i'm not aware of who's making the good stuff and who's not. heres the deal.....i have a 6550 bass amp i'm helping someone with. The amp has always been fitted with fender branded sovteks and has had a number of tube related issues over the last couple years. The amp itself appears to be fine as far as i've been able to determine, so i think it's just lousy tubes. the amp id a fender ampeg clone and it is cranked quite loud regularly.

So the question is, what 6550's are the most reliable today, and secondly have sovtek 6550's in the last couple years been as bad as some of those crappy other tubes sovteks been known to make at times?

[stokes]

In my opinion and experience,the only tubes to use in a guitar amp are NOS American or European tubes.The Russian and Chinese stuff just doesnt hold up.Especially if you push them hard.

[daz]

Thanks, but i need to know about current production.

[Steve Conner]

Well, how many different manufacturers actually make 6550s now?! I doubt there are more than three or four basic designs of 6550/KT88-style tubes in existence: Reflektor/Sovtek, SED/Winged C, JJ, and maybe Shuguang.

The rest is a rebadging exercise with maybe a change in the bottle shape, for instance, the coke bottle shaped "Tung-Sol" reissue is made by Reflektor, probably with the same guts as the Sovtek 6550WE or any other of the Reflektor tubes.

You got Sovteks previously, so get another one of the three next time. After a third set of tubes, you'll have tried everything on the market.

My local rehearsal studios retube their SVTs with what used to be Svetlana and would now be SED/Winged C.

[daz]

What about the JJ's?