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Marshall branded EL34?

currituckco

currituckco

Super Member
Hello,

Anyone know how to determine date and manufacturer of Marshall branded EL34 tubes?

I bought the amp probably in like 1993. It has a quartet of brown base el34s, marshall branded with the stamp 506 B8 and no other markings - no country of manufacture or anything helpful like that. Any ideas?

I decided to pull them out of my amp to try with my rebuilt dynaco mk4's, but in much better news, I did a small repair on my roommate's c. 1970 marshall superlead that he wants to SELL, so he let me take the quad of sylvania fat bottle el34s out if i retube it before he sells it! so for the price of the cheapest chinese el34s i get a quad of good-testing sylvanias! i believe this calls for a banana: :banana:

Nonetheless I'm very curious about these 90s Marshall branded ones. Are they chinese? if so I'll just stick them in my roommate's amp. If they are german RFT however....
 
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The 12AX7s are in fact labeled Chinese (I forgot to note that), so maybe I should go ahead and assume the EL34s are as well.

By the way, Celt, I'd really appreciate it if you'd answer a little quicker next time. :D
 
They are either chinese or they are cheap Russian.

Your friend has hurt his sale price by putting such crappy tubes in a fine amp.
 
Well, it needs other repairs, and he's going to take it to a shop to be repaired and then sold on consignment. I have a strong suspicion those tubes would not make it out of the workshop. I'm not saying all guitar amp repair people do this, but I've known MANY people who brought vintage amps with non-tube related problems whose amps were "retubed" without their permission, replacing valuable old stock US tubes with cheap chinese and not returning the old tubes with the amp. And I'm not sure you're right that a store would put an amp out for more money based on it having vintage tubes in it.

I've also fixed a number of things for my friend for free (including this amp today) and this is a sort of payment for that. I told him what they were.

Not that I need to defend myself, but I don't want people to read this as me being stoked about taking advantage of my friend.
 
To update - I ordered a matched quad of EH EL34s for my roommate. I will test the sylvanias in the mark IVs tonight, now that I have my PAS-2 in some semblance of working order. The phono stage still needs work but the line section sounds pretty good...
 
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