Amperex

Amperex Bugle Boy 12AU7 ECC82 Preamp Tube - Holland 1959 - Near NOS - RARE

$114.00 USD

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Perfectly balanced vintage Amperex 12AU7 ECC82 tube - Bugle Boy Label - Made in Holland, 1959 - Tests Strong - Super Rare

Product Summary

The most popular tube brand at the Soundlumia store, the audio tube that every serious audiophile wants to own, and perhaps the most legendary 12AU7/ECC82 tube on the planet. They fly off the shelves faster than we can restock, but here we go again: a perfectly balanced NOS Bugle Boy tube from 1959.

Sound Qualities

With the best known label from the legendary Heerlen factory, you get the "textbook" Amperex Holland midrange presentation that is transparent, natural and expansive, with a slight touch of warmth that illuminates your musical world. The top end is super airy, smooth and nicely extended like one would expect from the best Siemens tubes. Vocals are intimate, sweet and forward (but not right in your face) and that always reminds us how the vocals sound on the best Mullard tubes. Bass is deep and well controlled and the accuracy feels very similar to the high end German 12AU7/ECC82 tubes (Siemens, Telefunken, Valvo Hamburg.)

Professional Sound Evaluation

The tube worked wonderfully and sounded terrific in our professional studio setup for monitoring.

- Input: Cambridge Audio CXC V2 dedicated CD transport + Schiit Audio Bifrost 2 Multibit DAC

- Amplification: Handcrafted Bottlehead Crack Headphone amplifier

- Output: Neumann NDH 20 Closed Back Studio Headphones

Our full tube sound review was written 100% based on the actual listening experience while this tube was running in the system described above.

Professional Tube Testing

NO shorts, leakage or gas. NO noise or microphonics.

This tube tested Near NOS (90%+ mutual conductance value for NOS/NEW) on a Mercury 2000 tube tester with the following result (mutual conductance both in uMhos and in percentage of NOS/NEW):

2,850/2,750 (or 95%/92% of nominal)

Good tubes start around 2000 and new tubes (incl. NOS/NIB) 3,000, and Mercury 2000's rated mutual conductance (nominal) for new tubes is 3,000. Test result can also be seen in the pictures. In case you wonder what all these numbers would mean to your sound experience, it's actually quite straightforward: mutual conductance directly translates to a tube's ability to amplify sound so the higher the numbers the stronger.

Appearance & cosmetic condition

We treasure this tube also because of its nearly immaculate cosmetic condition - at least 95% of the silkscreen is intact and well preserved. The Heerlen factory date code etched on glass is perfectly visible:

delta 9K (delta = Heerlen, 9 = 1959, K=November)