Roland wrote:

Hello,

I wonder if the state-of-art stopped evolving or even deteriorated since
the old days. Are those NOS tubes genuinely better? Or do they just give
flavors liked by people?

You will get flavours with different brands of the same tube type no,
especially in amps with no NFB.
But some recent russian production sounds better than some old american
production.
That's what I have found with 6550. But its sometimes the other way around
with
other tubes, I didn't like the EH6CG7 I heard in a preamp last year.
Telefunken NOS were the best, with Mullard acceptable. Oz made 6CG7 seemed to
be very nice.

The only way to find out is to try a few different brands, but don't close the
mind by
leaping to any conclusions based on tests of just one tube.

Patrick Turner.



Thanks.

Roland