I missed a pair of the Swedish 33S30's that would have come to me from a private seller who has consistently sold me superior examples of true NOS tubes. Unfortunately I used most of them as they came to me at the height of my tube rolling experimentation.
I have bought some really uninspired TSRPs I have 3 pairs, only one pair sounds truly special. I think you have to be careful about generalization on a single tube or lot of tubes, because condition is very important. Sometimes a designation like VT231 seems to correlate with a better sounding tube than it's GT civilian clone, regardless of the engineers intent. The statement that 3 rivet 3 hole plates are the same as the GTs (2 hole plates of this apparent design that otherwise seem to be " Identical' to the 51-53 GT tube is very wrong, despite the "expert" source. Len over on audio asylum dissected the tubes in question and the Bad Boy seemed to much more stoutly designed with seriously much more copper wire length and gauge. Ultimately it means doing your homework.
I am an older fart and think many of you rush headlong into the world of tubes buying only very expensive rarities. It would be very instructive to try less expensive tubes to give you a perspective and really knowing that there is no "ordinary 6SN7" that would satisfy your needs and as I already said give you the background that would makes sense of buying the rarities, otherwise it just a pissing contest.
P.S. The domino 5998s are excellent and that 6080s OK but not as good.
To whomever expressed being anxious about finding them. They are already in short supply. I bought a couple of the Western Electric 421As and one of the two is pretty weak, so caveat emptor.
