Best Tubes for late 70s Model-T

[thomas]

Hi. I bought a late 70s model-t and found out that it has a) no matched quarter of tubes and b) only fucking oem-tubes in it. now i´m looking for a matched quarter of kt-88´s. i red that groove tubes are good. i´m living in germany and there are not many chances to get REAL good tubes. What about Ruby-Tubes. are they good, too? they seem to have a correct price, like 184.-$ a quarter. i can´t spend too much money in buying vintage tubes or sumthing like this, so i think i have to go with that. that´s it for now. greets, thomas

[Greg Z]

Ruby does not make tubes, they simply test and relable. Same with Groove Tubes.
CK out http://store.yahoo.com/triodeel/index.html
he ships across the pond
Probably the best affordable NOS tube would be the GE6550a's.  For new production the
svetlana 6550c is nice and the price is good.
Stay away from the svetlana kt-88's
Have heard good things about the EI-yugo KT-90's but haven't tried them myself yet

[thomas]

mine has 2 tung-sol 6550´s and 2 sovtek 6550we´s. the preamp-tubes are older than 20 years. can´t test the sound cause i have no cab at the moment.

[Geoff]

For preamp tubes, I like the 5751 and similar.  These are especially good in the PI slot.  You can get 'em pretty cheap NOS USA/JAN made.  Sovtek makes a new one but I haven't tried it.  These are lower gain but also lower noise -- ruggedly built too.

I heard the new EH KT88 tubes are pretty good.

Good luck!