Excluding Gold Lion, which sound shrill and sibilant to me, what are your favorite current production tubes for the BHK 250? I have some National 7DJ8 NOS tubes that are really nice, but they’ll need replacing soon and I can’t find them anywhere now. I’d prefer not going with NOS if there are any new production ones that sound better than the Gold Lions.
Not sure what you were looking to spend but if you wanted to stick with PCC88/7DJ8 these Philips start at $59.95 Philips PCC88
Have you tried them in a BHK 250?
No. Just going on reputation. I know that Conrad Johnson was using the Philips 7DJ8 for a while. My experience with that type was Telefunken, Siemens, Matsushita, Tungsram and Lorenz.
My current National 7DJ8 will be coming to end of life fairly soon, so I’ll need to replace them soon. I’d really not care to go with NOS, so I’m looking for the best sounding current production tubes. What do you like?
While I do not have the BHK250, I do have those same tubes, and prefer the lesser-priced Electro-Harmonix for being less tubey.
I didn’t know EH made an ECC88/ 6DJ8 only an E88CC/6922. I do realize they are advertized as interchangeable and many (myself included back in the day) treated them that way.
1 Like
Sorry about the mix up… I meant to type E88CC instead of ECC88. My bad.
1 Like
Wasn’t sure and in a bunch of ways they’re treated equivalently anyway.
1 Like
Wow! Thanks for that detailed info. That clears up some confusion for me.
1 Like
Very good information. The next step up on the ladder in terms of hardiness, longevity and tighter tolerances was/is the 7308/E188CC. The E188CC again being the European equivalent of the tube. As far as I know only the American made 7308 could be used in military applications so as to not rely on foreign made products.
1 Like