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Mullard
Mullard 12AU7 ECC82 Matched Pair - Philips/Yellow Print - Blackburn 1962/63 Gf1
Mullard 12AU7 ECC82 Matched Pair - Philips/Yellow Print - Blackburn 1962/63 Gf1
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$227.50 USD
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$227.50 USD
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Tube Summary
No other tubes can deliver vocals like the Blackburn Mullard's, and that's a fact. These ECC82 tubes, especially the early 1960s ones, are extremely hard to find today and are becoming every serious audiophile's darling.
Sound Characteristics
The overall tonality of Mullard ECC82 tubes is warm and lively with a very spacious sound stage. "Like a warm British jacket of the finest tweed, these glorious tubes have an attractive sweet warmth in their midrange and lower regions." This is how the experts on audiotubes.com describe the sound signature of British-made Mullard tubes. The top end is silky and pleasant and doesn't get rolled off. They retain a fine sense of "air" at the top, and the upper midrange is smooth and liquid. These tubes reproduce the human voice, especially female voices, with haunting realism. The British made Mullard tubes are also known to have an attractive sparkle at the top with rich bass...now we know where that "warm British jacket" comes from!
Professional Sound Evaluation
The pair 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: Woo Audio WA7 Fireflies (3rd gen) Balanced Headphone Amplifier
- Output: Focal Clear MG Pro open-back headphones
Our full tube sound review was written 100% based on the actual listening experience while this pair of tubes were running in the system described above.
Professional testing & sound evaluation
NO shorts, leakage or gas. NO noise or microphonics.
Both tubes tested Near NOS (90%+ nominal mutual conductance) and tightly matched on a reliable recently calibrated Mercury 2000 tube tester with the following results (mutual conductance both in uMhos and in percentage of nominal):
Tube 1: 2,750/2,750 (92%/92%)
Tube 2: 3,000/2,800 (100%/94%)
Good tubes start at 2000 and new tubes (incl. NOS/NIB) 3,000 - 3,100, and the 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 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 these numbers the stronger.
Appearance & cosmetic condition
One with the ultra rare yellow print Mullard shield logo and the other with the Philips Miniwatt label, both tubes are in excellent cosmetic condition. Nearly 100% of the paint and lettering are well retained. The Blackburn date codes etched on glass are also perfectly visible on both tubes:
Gf1 B2A4 (Gf1 = ECC82 production gen #1, B = Blackburn, 2 = 1962, A = January, 2 = Week 2 of the production month)
Gf1 B3D3 (Gf1 = ECC82 production gen #1, B = Blackburn, 3 = 1963, D = April, 3 = Week 3 of the production month)
Packaging
This pair of tubes will be packaged in new Mullard reproduction tube boxes.
