danman wrote:
I seem to prefer the sound when the pairs are not a perfect match. They seem to have more of a "3d" effect and sound livelier to my ears.
+1 You only need closely matched tubes for hifi.
danman wrote:
Is it possible for a tube to test good on a dealers tester but its current draw is just to high to run safely in a cathode bias amp.
danman wrote:
Both tubes that ive had problems with did test good on the sellers tester, but I know that test numbers dont tell the whole story.
These basic tube testers just test for emission levels. They just show what state the cathode is in and its ability to emit electrons. So a tube that emits lots of electrons measures as "good" or "excellent", but there's no indication whether the tubes' other characteristics, such as mutual conductance, are within spec. In this case you have got tubes with great cathodes, but which are way out of spec apart from that. Possibly the reason their cathodes are still good is that whoever first tried to use them back in the 1950s or 1960s found they were out of spec, and put them in their junk box, and then they later ended up on eBay.