Does the 6V6EH still have a high failure rate!

In my experience, the 6V6EH has always been a rugged tube. Not as rugged as the JJ, and certainly not as good as NOS, but back in '98 or so when they were first released, they were the best new production 6V6 on the market. You're probably thinking of the OLD Sovtek "6V6" (notice the use of quotes) which was smaller and all black inside, and not even a real 6V6! Those could only handle around 250V-300V on the plates, and would routinely fail in amps that ran them hard. Which is practically any guitar amp than runs 6V6s.

IIRC the max plate dissipation of the 6V6EH is 14W. You're at roughly 8W right now, or roughly 60% of max, which is a tad on the cold side. You might try upping it to 70% (a little less than 10W) and see if you like the tone better. You'll lose some clean headroom (the amp will break up earlier) but you might like that.

 

Get some new JJ's, they are very good and cheap.

 

From data from about 25 techs I know around the country, the EHs were disasters in many amps including Princeton Reverbs, one of the least demanding 6V6 amps.

Of course, not every tube has a problem, but even 5% is a horrible record. If you're in the 5% group the failure rate might was well be 100%.

 

Point taken, Mike. Let me add that I'm no tech, so I don't go through hundreds of tubes. Being an "end user" who gets the tube pre-screened from a vendor like yourself, I've used around three dozen 6V6EHs since they were released, and only one really failed early - and that was in a Champ. Blew it up after a week. Of the others, three or four pairs eventually failed, but those were all after a long time - four or five years. So knock on wood, my experience with them has been largely positive.

Just so we're on the right page, this is the 6V6EH:



And this is the old, old, very bad "6V6" (Sovtek labelled) which was the old new production around for years:

 

Doesn't TAD have a 6V6 now? Anyone have any experience with those if yes?

 

I think those ones are the same Chinese 6V6 that Mesa sells.

 

Back when I had 6V6 amps (DRRI and Germino Masonette) I liked the JJ better than the EH. When pushed the JJs weren't as fizzy in the highs. To me the JJs actually sound close to 6L6s, so if you like the tone you get with the EH you may want to stick with it.

By the way you can also run 6L6s in a DRRI for a little different tone and more clean headroom.

 

I have no idea about the mesa connection but TAD's are most certainly chinese made tubes. HOWEVER.... all TAD "STR" series tubes are built to TAD's (a German company) specs and then they do the final QC in germany. The TAD 6l6's are currently being hailed by many as the best available modern tubes. If the 6V6 are of the same quality then JJ may have some serious competition. BTW I bought JJ's for my DR and within a month one of them was shot. I don't know what their failure rate is but for me it was 100%.

 

I'd go with the Marconi 6V6Gs.

 

Well put it this way my Meteor II arrived today and kept blowing the 2A fuse. I figured out after going through 2 fuses that it wasn't the rectifier but I had 2 out of the 4 6V6EH power tubes were bad. Thank god I had 2 NOS Phillips 6V6's to replace them with. And with Marks great bias points and switches I was able to rebias the 2 new tubes in 2 minutes. Also talked to John at Fatsound and they are going to send me 4 new power tubes. Keeping my fingers crossed that the 4 new EH fair alittle better. BTW this new Meteor II is incredible. Love this amp to death.

Chuck

 

Plate voltages for my amp line is around 375 or so. Of 8 pairs of EH tubes I bought, 15 died, one lived. This was from five different batches (date codes) and I wound up paying almost as much on shipping as I did on the tubes.

Stuck some NOS Philips in there...no problem. Put the new JJ's in there, no problem (and even better tone, IMO).

I've gotten two bad JJ's out of about 25-30, but it sure beats the failure rate of the EH tubes (15 bad for 16? come on WTF?).

 

I have several 6V6 amps, both newer and vintage.

I run NOS in my old amps, like the Deluxe and Champ.

In my DRRI and Vicky Double D, I use the JJ's. I really like the tone, and both of those amps benefit from the bigger bottom of the JJ.

I think everyone knows that DRs and DRRIs are rough on the power tubes, so chose your tubes wisely.