Best EL34 reissue?

[fuzzman93]

Hi,
I'd rather to find old tube mullard type on E-bay,they are very expensive now .I asked myself if reissued tubes are good sounding and to everybody here who tried them ,what are the closerest tubes to old Xf2 Mullards? Thanks you!
Fuzzman93

[PRNDL]

I've heard from a very reliable source that current production EL34's are good but simply can't handle the bias currents, which is why they burn out so quickly for most people.

The solution, according to him, is to simply bias them very cold.
(I recall 20 mA, which is half what you'd expect, although this depends on plate voltage).

From a technical perspective, there's nothing wrong with biasing cold. It really does extend tube life. A higher bias decreases the crossover distortion notch, with diminishing returns.
In a HiFi system, you'd hate any distortion, but not in a guitar amp.

The general idea is to bias as cold as possible as long as the amp sounds good clean, which is not what you buy a Marshall for.