Ebay is a place of treasures and disappointments

I've been collecting valve (tube - toob - if you're from across the pond) bargains from ebay over the last few weeks. Looking for auctions ending late, badly worded, posted in the wrong place etc.

These all provide variety in the tones I get from the amps I build. Want Fender spank? Pop a 12AT7 in the preamp and a 6L6 in the output stage. Marshall roar? That'll be an EL34 and a JJ 12AX7. Higher gain levels? One of my NOS (new-old stock) Mullard 12AX7s and an Ei 6CA7. Need to keep the volume down a bit? Try a 6V6GT or use my own little Metisse amps Purity with a single EL84 output valve and a 12AU7 for sparkly vox tones or a 12AX7 for metal mayhem.

Well, from one seller I picked up 3 pairs of valves for about the price of a single one new. Some beautiful NOS General Electric 12AU7s in original boxes, some used Groove-tubes 6L6/5881s which were still good and some Canadian made Westinghouse 6L6s.

These Westinghouse valves are beautiful. They're the coke bottle shape that you see in every 50s sci-fi and Frankenstein movie. A really tall and classically elegant valve. Tones should be sweetly bright, with snap and spank, pushing into 'Bad to the bone' drive when cranked. I drew them from the packaging and looked at their fragile arrangement of wires and metal plates through the smokey glass envelope.

"These have had it" I though.

Unfortunately I was right.