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Are these tubes any good?

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I dunno about the 6SN7s, I'd be a little leary but you never know untill you plug them in, but I can vouch for the 5881s. I like to run them in my HK250 stereo amps bridged (kinda fake) to mono, but they sound as good as the old Tungsol 5881 to me, maybe better. YMMV of course, those are the only amps I've used them in, and it doesn't come close to pushing them hard. I'd be curious to know what you think of those 6SN7s, I tried some Rusky ones once and they were pretty bad, but I don't think they were the same as those, not even close. Awfully nice of your Dad, and I bet you will really like the 5881s.
 
Celt said:
Sovtek. Generally well thought of.
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I remember the first time I heard those 58881s. I had rebuilt an HK250 for someone, and had it playing on the JBL monitors in my shop one day when EW was over here, I think showing me how to use my scope or distortion analyzer, or something. But all the sudden, out of nowhere, he said, "That thing sounds good" I felt like a proud new Pappa. I don't think you hear him say that too much, so I was really proud, it was maybe my 6th or 7th amp rebuild. I didn't pick those tubes, the guy had bought them new for the amp and sent them to me with it. I can't remember what driver splitter I had in there, but probably a clear top RCA 6CG7 IIRC. Have you used them in guitar amps?
 
jaymanaa said:
He he, I'd help him dispose of them safely too. :) What is it about tubes that gets to guys like me and you. I could just sit and look at those for an hour or two, no problem.
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Ha!:rflmao:Funny you should say that. I was just sitting here last night looking at some I have in my stash with my magnifier glasses. I was looking at a 7027...........then I re-watched that Mullard/Blackburn video on YouTube again! :cool:

 
It's funny, I used to carry my Dad's tube caddy and look for certain number tubes when he was doing TV service calls. I never thought twice about them. It was always a PITA if you had to get the substitution book out and look through all the caddies. I think he had three maybe. For some reason I remembered the number 6GH8A when I got into this crazy hobby back when. He sold more of those dang things than anything else. He always had a sleeve of those, and always carried magnavox branded tubes when possible, RCA was in second place. No telling who made the Maggy tubes, but it was a Maggy dealer he worked for. Then there was the call where you had to take the TV in to the shop, like if it ate a flyback and the flyback ate a bunch of other stuff. I especially remember what they called "Theaters" which was a 25 inch TV with the stereo in the same cabinet. The curtis mathis ones weighed a ton, it was always the rich folks that had those things, they were super high end in their early years. I think they kinda went to crap when they went solid state. We had a Maggy that would rock the house. Lynard Skynard, Sweet Home Alabama wore out a needle or two. :rockon:
 
Interesting that you have a box with the hammer and sickle on it. Must be leftover old production.
 
Those Sovtek 5881s are very good, as long as you don't try to bias them up to idle over about 20 watts. They'd don't have the plate dissipation of a 6L6GC. They will come pretty darn close to the "true" 5881 spec (400v, 24 watt) spec.

IIRC, the HK 250 that Jay refers to above, has about 400v B+ and idles at about 50ma per tube. That's 20 watts dissipation. That'll work all day. OTOH, I tried to use these while testing an amp I was building, that was 440v on the plates, and needed 50+ma idle current per tube- and that was a bit too much for SOME of them. Of what I had on hand, I found a quad that would work without red-plating, but it wasn't true of all of them. I'm probably going to wind up using Ruby 6L6GC-MSTR tubes in that amp- they'll handle the higher dissipation and voltage with no problem.

I will say this- whenever I build another Magnavox AMP132/142/150 stereo 6L6 conversion (using the Magnavox 300-024 output transformers), I'm not going to use ANYTHING BUT these Sovtek-type 5881 tubes in them, anymore. Once I found the right screen voltage for them, they just sounded better than anything else in that particular alignment (390v plate, 330v screens, cathode bias, about 47ma per tube idle current).

Regards,
Gordon.
 
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