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Fake ge6550 tubes
- Thread starter Bas2jcksn
- Start date
Because the bottom wiring is different and the top black metal is longer and one is lighter and weaker but looks good.
I took a look at a 6550 pull. All three holes on the plate structure are round. Maybe there was variation? Maybe they are both fake.
IMHO if the tubes test good and are matched, rock em. If either is bad, throw it in the trash.
IMHO if the tubes test good and are matched, rock em. If either is bad, throw it in the trash.
The one on left is strong Rca.Just to know in the future what fake ge tubes look like if someone knew.The are expensive.
No way I would pay the asking price on good, athentic GEs.
A quick Google search says there are crimped plate and welded plate versions. The crimped plate has rounded holes on the outside and a rectangular hole in the middle.
Mine must be the welded plate version (three round holes)
Supposedly both have three getters, which AFAIK is not super common.
The GEs I have come in my Marshall JMP 2203. All four tubes were working. One of them had a compromised grid structure that was moving around and causing the bias to shift. Two were fairly well matched. The other was pulling significantly less current. I left the two matched GEs in the amp and found a pair of JJ KT88s that idle reasonably close. The amp sounds great IMHO.
Do we have any reason or evidence to believe that one of the tubes is fake? The tube could have had a design change through the years.
- Feb 12, 2006
- 60,978
- 5
- 220,742
- Disclosures
- Development Engineer-Mesa Boogie, Development Engineer-Genzler (pedals), Product Support-Genz Benz
Assume every tube is misrepresented unless proven otherwise.
One of the reasons why I ditched my tube amps… I would know the difference if one was a corn cob with GE painted on the side…
- Feb 12, 2006
- 60,978
- 5
- 220,742
- Disclosures
- Development Engineer-Mesa Boogie, Development Engineer-Genzler (pedals), Product Support-Genz Benz
I have been fooled several times by counterfeits, some are just too good cosmetically (down to the box) to tell yet they are not original and should not be sold as original for the prices they get.
I haven’t bought tubes in at least 20 years since I stocked up for my ST70 and SB12, both of which will outlive me. My tube amp guy has my trust as well for installing quality glass.
- Feb 12, 2006
- 60,978
- 5
- 220,742
- Disclosures
- Development Engineer-Mesa Boogie, Development Engineer-Genzler (pedals), Product Support-Genz Benz
Just beware that even knowledgeable guys can (and often do) get fooled. The fakes and counterfeits and remarks look that good cosmetically.
Not wholly related, but every time I hear GE tubes it reminds me of my days working for GE - when there was a GE. I was visiting one of the NY offices and was friends with one of the higher ups. He had a beautiful office with lots of decor - one of the items of "decor" was a rather large bookshelf stacked with hundreds and hundreds of GE tubes, artfully arranged to look nice. Preamp tubes and power tubes of all kinds - I stopped counting 6550's at 30 and there were so, so many more.
A few years ago I asked the guy what happened to them all and he said that they were still there far as he knew. There's a goldmine of tubes in that office!
A few years ago I asked the guy what happened to them all and he said that they were still there far as he knew. There's a goldmine of tubes in that office!
He has a state of the art computer based tube tester and burns everything in-I've never had a tube fail that he installed.
D
This. Assume all "NOS" output tubes are fakes (or used tubes on their last legs, if not downright faulty). Especially "matched" pairs/quartets. There just aren't that many of these left in working condition. But they can go for insane amounts of money so fakes are very common.
Having said that, I didn't think GE's were the most commonly faked tubes, and personally I don't see any obvious red flags with this "GE"? But I'm no expert on GE output tubes.
Luckily there are still a couple of companies that manufacture decent quality 6550s (at least as long as you buy them tested to weed out the bad ones...). I would NEVER buy "NOS" 6550s at this point.
D
Compared to what?
Are you comparing it to a different tube that you know to be a genuine GE (and not in your pics)?
Or are you comparing it to the (supposedly) RCA tube in your pic?
A GE will obviously look different to an RCA. I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say here? I don't see why it makes sense to compare a (supposedly) fake GE to a (supposedly) real RCA? They should look different whether they are both real or fake...???
GE, RCA, Sylvania, Tungsol, etc.: all manufacturers had their variances. So you do have to look very, very closely. When I had an SVT over 30 years ago, I happened across a good set of Sylvania 6550's. Yes, since many original tube companies don't make tubes anymore, and as @agedhorse commented, assume all are counterfeit until proven otherwise.
It gets even more complicated when other tubes have similar elements. For example, big-bottle Electro-Harmonix (I don't know who actually makes them) 6CA7's have similar plates to 6550's, but bias like EL34's. KT88's can vary also; it is fortunate @Wasnex found a compatible pair.
I ditched tube amps for bass decades ago, as much as for cost as anything else. I remember pricing a complete retube for an SVT that I had in the early '90's (including a real 12DW7, not the re-wired version for a 12AX7) was going to cost as much as getting a new solid-state amp with the same output power rating. The amp I purchased instead is still in my rehearsal hall cranking out, albeit with just a hair more noise from filter capacitors being 30+ years old, but with no repairs or other expense other than the gasoline to haul it around.
I have one remaining tube amp, a guitar amp: a new Marshall Origin with the switchable power. It has a "Tilt" knob, which I did to my Marshall 2203 over thirty years ago: take out the second input jack, install a 50K linear pot in its place, and wire the "bright" capacitor across it, in order to have a variable bright knob instead of a Fender switch, kind of like the way the 60's rockers balanced the inputs with a jumper on a JT45 and similar amps. Keeping in mind that early JT45's ran 5881 tubes (essentially the same as 6L6GC, same as Fender) I run my Origin with big-bottle 6CA7's instead of EL34's so I can get more clean headroom, as my preferred guitar playing tone is a little cleaner than the average rocker.
It gets even more complicated when other tubes have similar elements. For example, big-bottle Electro-Harmonix (I don't know who actually makes them) 6CA7's have similar plates to 6550's, but bias like EL34's. KT88's can vary also; it is fortunate @Wasnex found a compatible pair.
I ditched tube amps for bass decades ago, as much as for cost as anything else. I remember pricing a complete retube for an SVT that I had in the early '90's (including a real 12DW7, not the re-wired version for a 12AX7) was going to cost as much as getting a new solid-state amp with the same output power rating. The amp I purchased instead is still in my rehearsal hall cranking out, albeit with just a hair more noise from filter capacitors being 30+ years old, but with no repairs or other expense other than the gasoline to haul it around.
I have one remaining tube amp, a guitar amp: a new Marshall Origin with the switchable power. It has a "Tilt" knob, which I did to my Marshall 2203 over thirty years ago: take out the second input jack, install a 50K linear pot in its place, and wire the "bright" capacitor across it, in order to have a variable bright knob instead of a Fender switch, kind of like the way the 60's rockers balanced the inputs with a jumper on a JT45 and similar amps. Keeping in mind that early JT45's ran 5881 tubes (essentially the same as 6L6GC, same as Fender) I run my Origin with big-bottle 6CA7's instead of EL34's so I can get more clean headroom, as my preferred guitar playing tone is a little cleaner than the average rocker.
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These are legit GE 3-getter 6550s from the mid/late 1960s. I know them to be legit because I know exactly where they came from (which is not a common luxury when dealing with vacuum tubes).
One of them says Tung-Sol on it. That’s because GE re-branded tubes for multiple companies; a practice by all tube manufacturers going back at least as far as the 1930s. That’s part of the reason it’s hard to know what you’re looking at most of the time. Long before there was counterfeiting, there was rampant re-branding.
To add to the confusion, most manufacturers made multiple versions of their tubes over the course of each tube’s manufacture (as others here have already pointed out). Sometimes it was an improvement, sometimes a military specification, sometimes a cost-cutting measure. As the tube age gradually came to a close we also saw manufacturers re-labeling tubes with a different tube number that was “close enough”. With all of that hoopla going on years before the counterfeiters got into the game, the modern tube buying process is a mine field of dishonesty and misinformation.
One of them says Tung-Sol on it. That’s because GE re-branded tubes for multiple companies; a practice by all tube manufacturers going back at least as far as the 1930s. That’s part of the reason it’s hard to know what you’re looking at most of the time. Long before there was counterfeiting, there was rampant re-branding.
To add to the confusion, most manufacturers made multiple versions of their tubes over the course of each tube’s manufacture (as others here have already pointed out). Sometimes it was an improvement, sometimes a military specification, sometimes a cost-cutting measure. As the tube age gradually came to a close we also saw manufacturers re-labeling tubes with a different tube number that was “close enough”. With all of that hoopla going on years before the counterfeiters got into the game, the modern tube buying process is a mine field of dishonesty and misinformation.
- Feb 12, 2006
- 60,978
- 5
- 220,742
- Disclosures
- Development Engineer-Mesa Boogie, Development Engineer-Genzler (pedals), Product Support-Genz Benz
