Great looking amp,
However as someone who had an expensive guitar tube amp hobby at one point, I do not buy into the NOS camp at all. There is no way to verify they have never been used so they are not NOS (New Old Stock ) Maybe in the early 2000 there were NOS and I got some still in boxes and I still doubt that they were never used.
Also how hard do you use your amp, How many hours in a year? And how hard do you push the amp. If you are a working studio and this is in an iso room cranked to edge of breakup 8 hours a day, your NOS tubes would have been replaced already. They are not forever.
On my Frenzel, I had old 6SL7 that came with the amp and they tested out of spec compared to the new ones from the New Sensor Tung Sol based on the RCA spec book, and Frenzel told me to remove them
When I was into guitar amps (I had about 22 Mesa Boogies and Mesa Engineering amps plus older Fenders ). I ve done all the tube rolling and I cannot hear any difference. In many cases they were microphonic or leaky, Power tubes on my single ended UniValve - a "NOS" 6L6 had a white light in it which I thought was cool until it blew in about a week (I paid 200 for that tube in 2014), I think there were some batches of GT rectifier tubes that were bad and for a while I hunted old RCA rectifiers. So far the new ones are good.
I really think the NOS marketing is a lot of BS - after spending so much money on them, I won't recommend wasting money on them and I do not believe or here that they are better. My Mesa Studio 22 was taken out by a NOS 12AT7 acting as a phase inverter. All my Mesa branded preamp and power tubes and Sovtek and JJ stuff plus New Sensor and JJ stuff are satisfactory. Except for RCA rectifiers - I will not trust a "NOS" tube on a gig. You can ask Andy as well as the guys at Mesa what they think. After all they make amps that are pushed really hard,
Here's what Freyette puts in his amp. This was he still owned VHT. I share the same sentiment with NOS.
