Ben Harmless
Registered: March 2003
Location: Albany, NY US of A
Posts: 3233
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Review Date: Thu January 26, 2006
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Price you paid?: Not Indicated
| Rating: 5
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Pros:
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Great service, good products
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Cons:
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Tube matching technicalities
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Let the praise begin right? By now nearly everyone has heard of Bob at Eurotubes. He distributes only JJ tubes, but is full of helpful advice, and won't steer you wrong.
The catch of course, is that he's only got those JJs. If they're not for you, then neither is Bob. They are good tubes, however, and there's almost certianly something for everyone.
I personally have been through a couple of sets of the JJ E34Ls, and tried a set of the preamp tubes as well.
Here's the thing: Bob, like many others, tests and grades incoming tubes. The power tubes are matched nicely by my measurements, and the preamp tubes are rated for gain. This is where things get a little weird, so keep this in mind whenever ordering gain-rated tubes. I was asked "would you like the preamp tubes that have been rated for high gain?" As I'm not a big metalhead, I declined, but I think it cost me. While I don't need destructive gain levels, I still do like a good crunch out of my Marshall, and when I popped the JJ 12ax7s in in place of the 12ax7EHs that were in there previously, the amp became a much different beast. The gain was drained out of it, and the highs were severely limited. Only later, after deciding that the JJ 12ax7s were not for me, did I realize that by saying "no" to the offer of high-gain tubes, (at a slight upcharge) I was, in effect, saying "yes" to the tubes that had been tested and specifically rated lower on the gain scale. Oops. I figured that the "high-gain" tubes were just the very highest rated, and everything else was in the normal range. Not so.
Still, Bob is a stand-up guy, and I'll keep ordering those power tubes, and probably even give the preamp bottles a try again sometime. Bob even sent me a personal e-mail thanking me for an order I placed on his website. I always figured the purpose of taking orders on your website was that you didn't have to write a lot of personal e-mails. Apparently, Bob feels differently, and I'm glad he does.
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"I think I'll go for the life of sin, followed by the last-minute, presto-change-o, deathbed repentance."
- B. Simpson
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