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Another day, another box of valves arrives. This time it is a lot of 6P6S, otherwise known as 6V6. The factory box has seen better days, it definitely saw some wet days. Considering these were packed away in 1969, I’m damned impressed that they’re not smashed. I bet the gentlemen (and/or ladies) who packed the tubes in the box during the Cold War never would have believed they’d finish their life in some audio gear in California.
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fj0rdy
1
Aug 18, 2021
Mmm, i can feel this good old aroma of worn soviet cardboard right through the screen. You have pretty rare pack, most of what i see here in Russia currently on sale are from mid70s-80s
Fayne
2575
Aug 18, 2021
Yeah, when there are western equivalents available the Russian stuff tends to be not as wanted. A few exceptions with things like the 6H1П which do have near western equivalents but still make some of the best low-noise phase splitters, any audio tube variant with a ДР designation (which I've seen called Russian Gold, for good reason), and pretty much anything from the real/original Svetlana (not the New-Sensor crap). 6П3С and 6П3С-E aren't terrible sounding. I mean, I still prefer JJs over them for the most part, but the Russian tubes don't sound terrible in hifi as long as the gear wasn't designed to drive them to the western typical voltage limits. A few of the Russian (and Chinese) only tubes are dang sweet sounding when properly driven. The 6П1П, 6C19П, and 6H6П for example. I've scoured myself a number of factory boxes of each with different years and factories just because I like them so much. 6П1П makes for especially nice sounding speaker amps when driven push-pull, wonderful mids and treble with just enough bass to satisfy. The 6C19П sounds better than 6AS7/6H13C in OTL (in my opinion) with a tighter bottom end. I'll absolutely take 6H6П in OTL over the similar (but wildly different) 12BH7 or ECC99 any day.
fj0rdy
1
Aug 19, 2021
FayneWow, you really know your stuff ;)
SimonShurville
7
Mar 23, 2021
Very nice !!!
rumata13
563
Jul 27, 2020
what are you going to do with 50 identical tubes?
WallySpace
3
Jul 11, 2022
rumata13Tubes burn out and may or may not be available in the future. Mostly used in audiophile and music instrument amps, the worldwide consumption has diminished every year since the 80’s. RCA and Edison (and other American made tubes) are no longer. Thus Soviet era tubes are now sought after. It just is not that profitable to manufacture (high quality that is) tubes for a rather small market. It’s ver hard to find tubes for my 70’s McIntosh amp. So sad.
Fayne
2575
Jul 11, 2022
WallySpaceWith Russia having gone off the deep end it has become even harder to find reasonably priced lots of tubes. I lucked out before the bombs started falling and got myself factory boxes (or large splits of factory cases) of 6ZH1P, 6ZH4, 6ZH8, 6N1P, 6N2P, 6N3P, 6N6P, 6P1P, 6P14P, 6P15P, 6P43P, 6P3S, 6P6S, 6P7S, 6S19P with most of them being E, EV, VR, and DR. I'm still bummed that the factory box of GU-50 I'd ordered was a casualty of the first days of the war in Ukraine. Probably not as sad as the actual victims of those first days, but still very unhappy.
(Edited)
Dang those are some sexy tubes
ds60
77
Jul 9, 2020
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Well, it's Commiefornia, so I'm sure the Soviets would like it.
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Gonza
39
Jul 27, 2020
ds60🤣🤣🤣🤣
Fayne
2575
Jul 8, 2020
Bonus pictures of a new vintage vacuum tube multimeter which arrived shortly before the tubes.
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DaveMediocre
1
Jul 12, 2021
Your tubes are nice but I really like your multimeter!
Fayne
2575
Jul 12, 2021
DaveMediocreI <3 my boat anchors too. Especially so the TV-2 and TV-7 tube testers I posted photos of over at https://drop.com/talk/42383/photos

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