Eurotubes=Bad News

[soundmasterg]

There is another thread going about how the Tube Depot has basically screwed over a lot of people by selling very shoddy Svetlana factory seconds. I personally had to send tubes back six times to them to get a functioning EL34 that would pass a tube test on a mutual conductance tester without showing up as shorted or gassy. Others had worse luck than me. I would never buy anything from that place again. They had a 14 day return policy which was good. I wasn't questioning falcom's experience per se.....I objected to his sarcasm and the fact that he was bashing someone without any details about the circumstances. I did point out that shipping could have been the cause of the damage, especially with UPS. Its all good though.

Greg

[big_teee]

There is another thread going about how the Tube Depot has basically screwed over a lot of people by selling very shoddy Svetlana factory seconds. I personally had to send tubes back six times to them to get a functioning EL34 that would pass a tube test on a mutual conductance tester without showing up as shorted or gassy. Others had worse luck than me. I would never buy anything from that place again. They had a 14 day return policy which was good. I wasn't questioning falcom's experience per se.....I objected to his sarcasm and the fact that he was bashing someone without any details about the circumstances. I did point out that shipping could have been the cause of the damage, especially with UPS. Its all good though.

Greg

Greg I understand!
Like I said that I was just passing by.
I do hate to hear about Your Problems with the TubeDepot.
I've heard some problems with a lot of folks.
I've not heard much good about the TubeStore either.
So when I need to buy tubes for my Traynor YCS-50 where do I dare order from???
I've had the Traynor going on 2 years and right after I bought it I orderd the 3 Tungsol 12AX7s and the 2-6L6WXT+ Sovtek tubes.
They are still running ok.
However when I re-tube it I would like to put in power tubes that would give more head room on clean and thicken it up a bit.
That may be a tall order I know.
Any suggestions.
Later,
Terry

[soundmasterg]

Terry, it is kind of hard to get more headroom, AND thicken it up at the same time. I've used Winged C 6L6GC's, JJ 6L6GC's, and Tung Sol reissue 5881's and 6L6STR's to good effect in several amps in the past. Any vendor that sells those should be able to give you something that will work well and sound good. Antique Electronics sells some of those and are generally a good vendor for many folks. Eurotubes only does the JJ's, and most people seem to be happy. For the Tung-Sol reissue stuff, sometimes it can be hard to find a vendor who sells them...New Sensor is the distributor for them, and they own the factory in Russia that makes them, but you have to have a wholesale account to buy from them directly. If you look around though, there are quite a few good vendors that sell them. They really are very nice tubes. As far as tubes go, the 6L6 family of tubes is a very reliable one so most manufacturers have good product.

Greg

[big_teee]

Terry, it is kind of hard to get more headroom, AND thicken it up at the same time. I've used Winged C 6L6GC's, JJ 6L6GC's, and Tung Sol reissue 5881's and 6L6STR's to good effect in several amps in the past. Any vendor that sells those should be able to give you something that will work well and sound good. Antique Electronics sells some of those and are generally a good vendor for many folks. Eurotubes only does the JJ's, and most people seem to be happy. For the Tung-Sol reissue stuff, sometimes it can be hard to find a vendor who sells them...New Sensor is the distributor for them, and they own the factory in Russia that makes them, but you have to have a wholesale account to buy from them directly. If you look around though, there are quite a few good vendors that sell them. They really are very nice tubes. As far as tubes go, the 6L6 family of tubes is a very reliable one so most manufacturers have good product.

Greg

Last time I talked to Tube Depot that's what they told me that the Winged C SED SV6L6GC Would be about my best bet.
I took out the Sovtek 5881WXT. They are supposed to be very reliable, but sound not very colorful. What about the short bottle TAD 6L6WGC-STR tubes.
I've heard great and bad things about them? The Winged C's are supposed to be very reliable.
Greg thanks for your help ahead of time!
Terry

[AudioWorks]

Ok i was reading this thread on and off as i have really started using eurotubes for my tubes i buy. I started off with just the preamp tubes which i have always liked and then started ordering the power tubes and found they were always way better then groovetubes/russian tubes. So many times Ive pulled a tube with an open filament straight out of the groovetube box or had a customer say they just bought new groovetubes for an amp and i test them and they have no gain at all.
BUT
Just last night the almost exact same thing happened to me on a jcm2000 where the brand new eurotube 12ax7 i had put in there and pre tested on my Hickok worked great for 5 min but then the customer calls and says his amp quit working soon after he turned it on he brings it back and guess what, its totally white. It was the only jj tube in that amp and the only one that went totally gassy, this was not a slow leak this was a quick right after the amp was turned on gas leak. And the amp worked fine for his entire gig when i replaced the eurotube for a different brand tube.

So i think we should give this guy the benefit of the doubt before we blame him for everything when even a monkey can change a tube with out cracking it. How often have we made a tube go gassy buy just putting it in the socket? I think its super rare im guessing, never happened to me. Ive bent pins on occasion but never made a tube go white right after putting it in.

I'm starting to wonder if i need to find a new vendor for tubes, sad cause jj's are my fave tube when they work.

[defaced]

I'm cool with all of this, until you start to think through the statistics of it all and you come to the conclusion that things will happen, user fault or mfg fault, to cause things to die. Two tubes go gassy out of how many sold? That's what you have to think through. Is this really even a problem or just the typical "noise" you get when you look at failure rates (or anything else really)? Or is this just a bothersome lot of tubes that are being blown through (and before someone pipes up about this being unacceptable, I agree, but this is common in modern manufacturing). If alot of people reported the same thing, in alot of different spots online, and I was also having problems, then I'd start thinking about finding another vendor. In my eyes, the sky still has yet to fall.

[big_teee]

I'm cool with all of this, until you start to think through the statistics of it all and you come to the conclusion that things will happen, user fault or mfg fault, to cause things to die. Two tubes go gassy out of how many sold? That's what you have to think through. Is this really even a problem or just the typical "noise" you get when you look at failure rates (or anything else really)? Or is this just a bothersome lot of tubes that are being blown through (and before someone pipes up about this being unacceptable, I agree, but this is common in modern manufacturing). If alot of people reported the same thing, in alot of different spots online, and I was also having problems, then I'd start thinking about finding another vendor. In my eyes, the sky still has yet to fall.

I agree the Sky Aint Falling and things like tubes do go bad. That still the case falcom got a bad rap. In Eurotubes defense just several bad tubes. In Falcom's defense he didn't get the benefit and the service he deserved. I agree with audiworks, that most chimps can change a tube especially ones that don't require any bias adjusting. falcom said that after the fact he bought other tubes and all was fine.
So Now what? I'm back to bad tubes and still probably some mishandling from what can brown do for you.
Terry

[J M Fahey]

On the same line of thought, even if there is something to blame , of which I'm not sure yet, being such a small sample as to be statistically meaningless, why blame specifically Eurotubes?
Or think some foul play by him?
If anything, I might begin to pay attention to what JJ is doing, say having a problem with glass and pin metal (Rhodium alloy?) coefficient of dilation/expansion not perfectly matching, which might cause a minuscule leak when heating, consistent with the results shown.
I fail to imagine Mr Eurotubes staying late at night, working by the candlelight and with a one-eyed hunchback helper, twisting tube pins oh-so-slightly front and back, as to make them fail minutes after use, all accompanied by a bloodcurling cackling laughter.
Back to the real world, I think Mr Eurotubes must be very annoyed by all this, which is bad for business.

[big_teee]

On the same line of thought, even if there is something to blame , of which I'm not sure yet, being such a small sample as to be statistically meaningless, why blame specifically Eurotubes?
Or think some foul play by him?
If anything, I might begin to pay attention to what JJ is doing, say having a problem with glass and pin metal (Rhodium alloy?) coefficient of dilation/expansion not perfectly matching, which might cause a minuscule leak when heating, consistent with the results shown.
I fail to imagine Mr Eurotubes staying late at night, working by the candlelight and with a one-eyed hunchback helper, twisting tube pins oh-so-slightly front and back, as to make them fail minutes after use, all accompanied by a bloodcurling cackling laughter.
Back to the real world, I think Mr Eurotubes must be very annoyed by all this, which is bad for business.

Ok I agree to a point. The loser here was Falcom. If it was a bad tube problem Eurotube should have worked it out and got reimbursed from JJ. The part I didn't like was the fact that on the second bad tube Eurotube wouldn't stand behind the product. That's why we have been discussing this all this time. Is because they wouldn't stand behind the product, and instead alienated the customer. Who in fact said he had lots of experience changing tubes, and wasn't a newbie.
I know after reading this A. I am gun-shy from buying from Eurotube because they may not stand behind there product, and B. it sounds like JJ may have some quality issues.
So I'm back to another question I had, when I re-tube my Traynor YCS-50 What tubes do I use and Who do I purchase them from???
Thanks for letting me vent, and thanks for Listening.
Terry

[Enzo]

REgardless of whose "fault" the failed tube might be, the real question here is how both the vendor and the customer react.

If the tube was OK when it shipped, and OK when first tested, then how on earth could Eurotubes or anyone else know the glass was about to fail its vacuum? If teh amp worked when the tube was installed, then the tube was working. If it then failed gassy 5 minutes later, then either the tube was damaged in shipping/installation/use or it was somehow weakened to start with.

If Eurotubes had a huge number of them failing they would know about it, and I know those guys well enough to think they wouldn;t be trying to hide it. On the other hand, in a box of 100 tubes, if the end row took a smack in shipping, there could be 5 or 6 tubes along the row with weakened glass. Or if it was a pallet load of boxes, one box might have been stressed. Now if someone orders a handful of tubes, chances are they will all come from the same area of the box. If someone orders a tube or two and it gets replaced and all those come out of the same stressed box, then a couple customers suffer high failure rates while overall, the percentage of dead tubes is about average for the vendor.

In my business I am both a seller of services and a consumer of them. I buy parts and I sell them too. If I have a bad part from a vendor, I will call and tell them, and expect replacement. If I get repeated failures, I ask if there have been any quality problems with recent batches, I might ask what could be going wrong if it is not the parts themselves. Chances are I won;t holler at them and go for hostile right away. That won;t get them to react any better than I will if someone calls me a motherfucker.

[Prairie Dawg]

+1. It says in the Book 'a soft word turneth away wrath but a grievous word stirreth up anger'. If it was me, I'd have sent the guy back his money with thanks and told him, you're now in no different a place than before we started. Have a nice day.

[CharlieP]

I wouldn't assume that winged "C"s are all that much better in reliability. I have been following a few threads on TGP forum and have heard a lot of reports from some of the techs that frequent the forum! They are having a lot of troubles with them lately. I myself have used the TAD 6L6WGC-STR in a few amps with good results in tone and longevity!
I get the opinion that the Eurotube owner is a bit stubborn at times! May rub some people the wrong way! A lot of people are happy with doing business there. He must be doing something right! I myself never liked jj preamp tubes and have never used a jj power tube because of that! Just my preference! So I am not a likely Eurotube customer since that is about all he pushes!

[big_teee]

I wouldn't assume that winged "C"s are all that much better in reliability. I have been following a few threads on TGP forum and have heard a lot of reports from some of the techs that frequent the forum! They are having a lot of troubles with them lately. I myself have used the TAD 6L6WGC-STR in a few amps with good results in tone and longevity!
I get the opinion that the Eurotube owner is a bit stubborn at times! May rub some people the wrong way! A lot of people are happy with doing business there. He must be doing something right! I myself never liked jj preamp tubes and have never used a jj power tube because of that! Just my preference! So I am not a likely Eurotube customer since that is about all he pushes!

Thanks Charlie for info on Winged C and the Tad 6l6wgc-STR's.
I think that is the short bottles. I've read where some folks love them, then I read a while back about some reliability problems with them also.
My next question is where to buy the TADs. Tube Depot doesn't carry them.
Where do you get them. I think the JJs work good in certain apps. The sound Dark to me.
Later,
Terry

[Wilder Amplification]

Here is an email from Eurotubes to a customer inquiring about tubes. This should be all the specifics we need to see just why Eurotubes is bad news (mis-info city) -

"For what you’re looking for I would go with a matched quad of the JJ 6L6GC's power. They have a deeper low end and a tighter, punchier sound than the stock 5881's. As for the preamp tubes I would go with three of the JJ ECC83S's. This will fatten up the drive channel and warm up the clean channel. I would also use a graded and balanced ECC83S in the phase splitter hole which is the preamp tube that's closest to the power tubes. This will eliminate any dead spots and really make the amp sing.

The only other option would be if you want any of the preamp tubes premium graded for gain. The high gain ECC83S's have about 10% more gain than standards which adds a bit of bite and a sharper dynamic but does not hurt the clean tone. This is definitely the way to go for what you’re looking for. The other attribute that these tubes have is a faster filament rise time which is great for an EVH, Malmsteen, Petrucci or Satriani type style and is also good for fast palm mute styles"

Fast filament rise time huh? Now that's funny!

[defaced]

I would also use a graded and balanced ECC83S in the phase splitter hole which is the preamp tube that's closest to the power tubes.

I agree that the marketing crap is well, crap. But I'm not seeing anything technically wrong with this statement given certain assumptions (LTPI particularly). The PI might not be in that location in every amp, but a balanced tube is generally recommended for the PI position, but again not always necessary depending on the PI type.