Mullard 12AU7 ECC82 Preamp Tube Warm British Tone Blackburn 1960 -Strong NOS

Perfectly balanced vintage Mullard 12AU7(ECC82) audio tube - Made in Gt. Britain - Blackburn 1960 - Super Strong NOS - Very Rare. No other tubes can deliver vocals like the Blackburn Mullard's, and that's a fact. These ECC82's, particularly the early 1960's ones, are extremely hard to find today and are becoming every serious audiophile's darling. 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. 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 Mitcham 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! 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. Nearly 100% of the paint and lettering is intact on this tube, and the Blackburn date code etched in glass is perfectly visible: B0C4 (B = Blackburn, 0 = 1960, C = March, 4 = 4th week of the month).

The tube tested Super Super Strong NOS (120%+ of nominal mutual conductance) on a Mercury 2000 tube tester with the following result mutual conductance both in. UMhos and in percentage of nominal. 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 the numbers the better. It's the least expensive option but it may take longer than other carriers. Soundlumia sets extremely high quality standard for the products we deliver.

Sound experience is a very subjective thing, and let's be real it's not that easy to run into compatibility issues between amps and tubes so that one won't fly, either. Secondly, if you are a tube roller looking to game the return system, Number One STOP. We have seen it all and we know what you're up to.