The Golden Age of Valves - Now?

These days the manufacturers in Eastern Europe are producing valves with most of the qualities of the old Western European manufacture, y'know, black plates, mica spacers, D-getters and all the rest of the b****cks.

Well, OK, maybe there are a few really high-end things you don't get, that you used to get - super-pure materials, ultra-hard vacuums - but sound for guitar is not going to be affected by that stuff, let's leave it to the hi-fi guys to worry about whether it's worth a 2000% mark-up. That's if they've any change left from the £500 they put aside for speaker cables (don't tell them about 2-core mains flex, that's our little secret).

Even previously hard-to get valves aren't so any more. 6v6s used to be a problem, for instance, but now JJ and Sovtek (badged Electro-Harmonix) both make a good one.

(BTW, never, ever buy a stubby little 6v6-labelled effort covered with black paint inside all the way up the glass. These are possibly the worst new-manufacture valves ever sold and aren't really 6v6s at all.)

Recommended buy? I really like the new JJ 6v6. Smooth yet crunchy, like a toffee crisp. My harp amp has four of them.

If you type '6L6 review' into Google into Google you'll find that there are some reviews on forums, which may be unbiased but may also be from (a) nutcases (b) people who are trying to justify having recently spent three figures on two valves. There are also some reviews by people in the trade, which won't be nutty but, being written by valve retailers, may naturally enough be affected by a wish to retail valves - especially expensive ones or ones you branded yourself. Both types of review are full of useful information, but caveat emptor and anyway because these reviews focus on the subtle little differences between brands rather than the overwhelming similarities amongst types of valve they will tend to draw lines that aren't really significantly there.

So are there any differences between brands that actually matter?

Well yes.

In my view there's a much bigger difference between a poor current-production valve and a good one than between a good current production and a NOS valve.

There's a big mystique thing about NOS valves as well as the supply-and-demand factor - witness the big prices now being asked for winged-C Svetlana 6L6s, valves that only very recently were current-production and cheap but now are expensive - though as they are now becoming available through UK distributors again we may see some more sensible prices on proper Svets soon.