Tube Sound Comparison.- Modern VS Vintage Pt. II - ECC83/12AX7 (Best of both world) 

I work at an electronics recycling center with customers all over my region. I can’t even tell you how many vintage vacuum tubes I have found Mullards, Raytheon’s, telefunkens, RCA’s, Sylvania, you name it. I got it. I’ve been able to experiment a lot with them in my guitar amplifier. I just have to get a tube tester and then I can get some of these tubes, circulating in the world and sell some.

Although I think the Philips tubes were winners here, I do like the JJ long plate tubes a lot. The long plate modern tubes are certainly decent sounding. In this test, the JJ had a tighter more defined bass response and good frequency extension. Plenty good enough for most cases, but you are right when you say the vintage tubes sound more '3D'. The 3 dimensional midrange of the Philips was very noticeable and awesome sounding, but at the cost of a less well defined bass response. I'm currently choosing tubes for some Pultec style EQ's for mastering and may well go for either the JJ ECC803S or Sovtek 12AX7LPS purely for their linearity and neutrality. Still, gotta love the old tubes though ❤

Very interesting videos. 👍 Recently I tried to figure out why for example some 90's Sovteks and quite new Shuguangs seem to sound brighter than JJ ECC803S or ECC83S tubes I purchased two years ago. I made a test circuit and measured in it for example high end 3dB frq, gain Vout/Vin, plate resistance etc. of many ECC83/12AX7 tubes, both new tubes and NOS Telefunkens, RCAs, Tungsrams, Amperexes, Siemens etc. The results were clear and quite consistent. Those tubes which sounded bright had 3dB frq around 66-68 kHz, and those which sounded duller had 3dB frq around 43-44 kHz in same test circuit. Almost all NOS tubes had 3dB frq around 50-51 kHz. BUT those brighter sounding tubes almost without exception had lower gain ( and input capacitance ) as well. Plate resistance was different as well. So if the gain would be equalized changing plate and cathode resistor values of the circuit, differences would very certainly be much smaller between tubes, but in the SAME circuit the different gain, input capacitance and plate resistance make them sound different. And for example all JJ ECC83S tubes had higher 3dB frq than JJ ECC803S tubes. Surprisingly the tubes which seemed to achieve best gain without losing high end response, so they had possibly managed to reduce input capacitance and plate resistance, or optimize the mechanical structure of the tube, were Siemens tubes from late 80's. They were better than 50's Telefunkens or RCAs. I advice to measure those differences, not just to try to hear them because it turned out in my tests that if you can really hear things, they can be proved by measurements as well.

I have both JJ ECC83S and JJ ECC803S(not gold pins). They sound very different. I put JJ ECC83S/ECC803S in v1 and Telefunken 2-hole smooth plare in v2 and v3 of my Line Magnetic LP-33 phono stage. The JJ ECC803S sounds a lot more smooth than the JJ ECC83S. I guess they represent the sound charecters of long plate vs. short plate tube.

The difference is measurable. Just compare the old and new tubes with a curve tracer. Tube slope and amplification. This affects the sound especially if the amplifier circuit has no negative feedback.

Thank you! Your channel is amazing and I wish you great success.

I seriously enjoy this channel

Philps is way wider and warm... Thank you for sharing...

Very interesting vid! I heard more clarity, detail and upper midrange with the vintage tubes compared to the modern set which sounded warmer or blanketed by comparison depending on how you look at it. I was surprised at the order you arranged the 3 tubes for the modern set. I would have thought the E83CC for V1, the ECC803s for V2 and the gold pin version for V3 (PI). I've been swapping modern 12AX7 tubes around for my '72 Super Lead for a while now. What I've settled on is similar to what you have: a Mullard Reissue for V1 and JJ ECC803s Gold Pin for V2 and PI. For V1, I've also tried Tung-Sol, JJ ECC83s, JJ E83CC, EHX and an older Sovtek tube that has the lettering rubbed off. The EHX and Sovtek were sort the middle ground, the Tung-Sol had the biggest bottom and extended high end and sounded a bit scooped and the JJ ECC83s sounded muffled and fizzy. I thought I would really like the JJ E83CC, but in my amp it sounded sort of hard with emphasized upper mids. I just ordered a JJ ECC83MG to try out.

I found that the modern types sometimes work better as phase inverters in no3 position than the old ones, Fender Deluxe is much louder when I use 2 VOS in 1+2 and a modern jj in 3, for some reason it works really well.?!

The guitar playing is giving huge American Football vibes.

Thanks for posting!

try a Tung Sol 12ax7 in v1 and the rest JJ's - then compare to vintage and see how that compares.

Philips is great.

Please do jj ecc803 this plate is 19mm 3/4" in long or 17mm?

no subtitles

"there is no way that modern tubes could be better the modern ones" ??? needs clarification.

A very obvious audible difference. Sadly!