My amps have really old Sovteks in them and it's time to re-tube. Does anyone have experience with the new Electro-Harmonix 2A3's & 6SN7's? How do they sound compared to the Sovteks?

These are new tubes for EH and I'm quite pleased. I do intend to get a new pair of the Sovteks and see how they compare....old tubes vs. new tubes isn't a good comparison. Comparing tubes is a bit easier with mono amps.

I did listen to the Valve Art tubes and just didn't like them. I'm still amazed at the articulation of the EH tubes. Hopefully they will sound even better after they get about 500 hours on them.

If you get the EH 2A3's, let me know how they sound in your system.

I have a brand-new pair of Valve Art tubes, and they sound OK but have a very peculiar symptom. One sounds fine but the other makes intermittent pops, like a Geiger counter sound. If you rotate the tube 90o so that it lays horizontally, it becomes quiet. But stand it up and it starts popping again.

This is a consistent symptom, and is perfectly repeatable. Give it some signal and run it about a half hour and the popping goes away. Not fully, but the popping is reduced a great deal. You won't notice it when there is something playing, but in between passages, it's there again.

So I need to do something else. I probably should have sent this one defective tube back, but I didn't. It has maybe a couple hundred hours on it now, so I wouldn't feel right sending it back. I had hoped it would go away, but it hasn't. So I'll make it "go away" by buying new tubes.

I have a question. Do all 2A3's have a gas that glows blue inside? Or is it just Valve Art tubes? That's probably a very naive question, but I never noticed it on other 2A3 tubes and so I was wondering if maybe I just didn't pay attention.

What amp(s) and circuit configuration(s) are you running them in? I've got 'em in stock Paramours, and the symptom follows the tube. What I mean is that I can swap the tubes between amps and the symptom follows the tube, not the amp.

P.S. Seeker - Sorry to go on and on about Valve Art's 2A3. That's just exactly what you said happened at the other place. But the problem with the Valve Art 2A3 is exactly why I'm interested in the Electro-Harmonix 2A3 tube you mentioned when kicking off this thread.