Tung-Sol 5881 Matched Power Tubes Medium Duet

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Price: $39.99    

Product Description

The Tung-Sol 5881 is a very reliable, general purpose power tube much like the 6V6. These tubes are available in different grades depending on how much distortion is desired. Matched set.Soft, medium, and hard style descriptions refer to break up modes of the tube for an overdriven guitar signal. Soft-rated tubes break up easier and have the least headroom, yielding a heavier, harder distortion. In comparison, hard-rated tubes are harder to break up and have the most headroom. Medium-rated tubes fall in between.

Tung-Sol 5881 Matched Power Tubes Medium Duet Review

I'm using these in a Marshall 2204 scratchbuild (50 watt JCM800 single channel/dual input) with lots of mods and tweaks. I suppose that is the critical first thing to know. This amp only gives a max B+ of ~390VDC, so I've had EL34's and even 6V6's in it, with the latter being in the hopes to cut the volume some, at the sweet spot.

While the durability of the 6V6's was fantastic (JJ 6V6S), it was just a little too bright when pushed hard. EL34's are out of the question as they are just too loud for anything practical.

5881's tend to have a little less output than actual 6L6GC's, so I gave these a try. There's also been lots of ranting and raving by users who specifically want or need a 5881 for their applications (tweed Bassman, for example).

In my specific amp, these tubes do not disappoint tone-wise. They are a little bright when pushed, but the amp is not a tweed Bassman. And the brief trials of 6L6-types all did something similar, albeit brighter. But it's not at all bad, and if you have adequate tone controls on your amp, it's not an issue.

The tubes also *appear* to be well made, and there's certainly no noises or other apparent issues with them, except for one. I had one of the two redplate on me when they only had about 10 hours or less on them. Since the amp is a head, I would have never caught it if it wasn't early on (residue on the glass caused a bad burning smell), and I caught it before any damage occurred. The amp gets full maintenance whenever I replace power tubes, which included measuring the plate voltage, and using a proper meter to bias the tubes to between 65% - 70% max dissipation, and then playing for awhile before buttoning everything up. So I know it wasn't an issue of the amp's mechanical function.

I pulled the tubes, let them cool down, and then swapped their positions in the amp. I fired it back up, checked it repeatedly over the following hours/days/weeks, and no more redplating, and the bias for the pair is good.

There are now enough hours on the tubes to say that they will probably last awhile with no more extreme issues like the redplating, but I cannot in good faith give them even 4 stars for this reason. I've had other tubes that didn't do this at all. They may not have sounded as good, but sound is nothing if your amp/tubes fail on you, potentially catastrophically.

This is also *possibly* evidence of word that consistent quality from the Russian factories is suffering at the time of writing this. It seems that some suppliers of certain screened Chinese tubes actually have the upper hand, at least right now. The exception seems to be the Winged C "SED" tubes, but these can be confused with other brands (whoever currently "owns" Svetlana, for instance), so be careful. I have a pair of SED 6L6GC's in a Vibrolux Reverb with high plate voltage that have been flawless. They were purchased possibly 6 months prior to these Tung Sols, so they have even more hours on them. So don't rule ALL Russian tubes out, but do be careful with at least the Tung Sols. I have not purchased any other Russian manufactured power tubes recently enough to offer directly observed performance, either good or bad.

I guess it's also worth stating that no review is worth much if you put a tube in an amp that has too high of a plate voltage despite however you try to bias it. The non-JJ 6V6 is one such instance, and this 5881 is probably another. Since I know the amp that this is used in has a lower plate voltage, it will not fail for that specific reason. So as long as this particular tube's construction is good, it sounds and performs well in my particular amp.

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