And today was a turn of 12au7 from Mullard. I had to finish that Mullard story in one sitting 🙂 This time I decided to roll three very distinctive – kind of the hill – tubes. Mullard Long Plates, Mullard Box Plates & Mullard Short Plates. The results were quite interesting – and Yes i did enjoy that roll a lot!
Mullard 12au7 Short Plates – this tube could be had for practically nothing on Ebay – $8-10. Which is amazing considering the quality it brings to any system that uses 12au7. This is the signature Mullard sound with very sweet mids and very relaxed presentation – there is not iciness in the music produced by the tubes. You just sit down and listen and enjoy.
Mullard CV4003 Box Plates – a much more expensive tube – it’s going for about $50 a piece. Does it worth the 5x price, it’s for you to decide. The tube produces a fantastic sound stage and the amount of details is absolutely phenomenal. The nuances of female voice communicate by that tube are just hard to compare to anything else, until I listened to Long Plates…
Mullard 12au7 Long Plates – expensive tube – NOS is going for $90!!! Is it worth it? Again the amount of details and undertones are fantastic – even more than the box plates! The tube is however much darker than even the box plates. So it really depends on the music you listen to. If you use LPs, then this tube is a must. If you listen to music from your computer, this tube might darken things too much.
So there you go. Three fantastic tubes with very unique characteristics to each one of them. Hope it helps you to find the tube of your dream 🙂