The Truth about Tubes

    Originally tubes were manufactured in the United States , Great Britain and other countries.  Manufacturers in both Britain and The United States were trying to make the best audio tubes possible.  The audio quality of the tube was very important.  In other countries like China and Russia the tubes were primarily used in military applications and their audio qualities were not an important issue.   Everything was fine until the eighties when American and British manufacturers stopped making tubes.  The only tubes that were being made sucked.  It caused real problems in the music industries because musicians used tubes in their guitar and bass amplifiers.

 Tube amplifiers get their sound from the tubes!  The tubes are your sound!

     For years there was a real after market for “NOS” (New but Old Stock) tubes in the eighties, nineties, and even the beginning of this century.  I use to search out and stock NOS tubes for my customers because many wanted that original sound that was lost when the USA and Britain quit manufacturing tubes.  Of course, they were very expensive.

    Then somewhere around 2002 Groove Tubes started offering NOS copies. I believe they were being made in the USA by some start-up company and sold thru Groove Tubes.  Where ever they were coming from, they were selling exact knock-offs of some really classy tubes and side by side comparisons by me showed them to sound as good if not better then the NOS tubes I had in stock at that time.   

    So if your amp still has Slovak or Ruby or what ever “new” name they use for Russian and Chinese tubes, get them out of you amp as fast as you can and replace them with the Groove Tubes 6L6GE or  6CA7M or the 12AX7M and hear what a tube amp is suppose to sound like.

William Mellon