I was always very skeptical about selected tubes. I mean, how much different could it be from the non selected tube from a reputable manufacturer (we are not talking about Chinese tubes here). I got 4 Telefunken 12ax7 Selected Tubes when I purchased my McIntosh 275. I plugged then in, and they sounded very nice. Then I looked up the price of the tubes and they were going for $225 each!!! “This is crazy” I thought. How can a tube cost so much compared to the non-selected version that you can buy for ~$40 on a good day. Given that these were NOS and everything, but come on. So I put them away. Later on I decided to sell them – $900 is a lot of money for 4 small tubes.

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Tube rolling with MC could be a lot of fun and could lead to a sound that you will not only like, but love. The flexibility is just incredible. This post will focus only on preamp tubes. Power tubes are out-of-scope 🙂

There are 7 preamp tubes in reissue MC 275, V1 (12ax7) – phase-splitter, V2, V5 (12ax7) – input amplifiers. V3, V6 (12at7) – output tube drivers, V4, V7 (12at7) – Cathode followers.

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Found this very interesting site about vintage tubes. Great resource for beginners!

http://www.soundstage.com/tubeor/tube.htm

EIA (Electronic Industries Association) codes you might find on a tube. A great resource to have when the original logo is gone or you have a generic logo (remarketed). See the post for all the codes