Be careful how you bid on eBay....
The more I listen to music with Raytheon JAN-CRP-6SN7GT VT-231 (flat black plates, 8 copper through rods) tubes in the gain stage in Freya the more I like them. In fact, I like them just as much as I like the Sylvania 6SN7GT "Bad Boy" tubes.
It's hard to find this particular version of the Raytheon VT-231 tubes. Many of them have "T" shaped plates which are reputed to not sound as good. There are also flat plate version that don't have 8 copper through rods. I have a pair of those and they sound good too...probably just as good. But I know I really like the sound of the 8 copper rod version.
I decided I wanted one more matched pair of these tubes and kept an eye out on eBay for a pair. Pairs kept showing up but they had the "T" plates or were not NOS. Then, late last week several NOS matched pairs and matched quads showed up on eBay. Most of them were the "T" plate style. But 1 matched pair and 1 matched quad were exactly the tubes I was looking for. I tried to buy the matched pair by making the seller an offer via a message. He said that once auctions started he never stopped them. So I had to watch these tubes for 5 days.
Fortunately, the bidding was slow on these tubes. But, the matched pair was getting more interest than the matched quad. I let eBay auto bid for me. But I usually wait until last 15 seconds or so to enter my max bid amount. I was willing to pay more per tube for the matched pair tubes so I entered that max bid and, just in case I lost that bid, I figured I would put in a lower dollar bid on the quad. Well, I needed every cent of my max bid on the matched pair, but I won the pair. Well, my low bid of the quad didn't get close to being needed. I won that auction easily. Oops.....I bought 6 tubes when I wanted two. At least I really really like them!! I better because I now have 5 matched pairs!!
