[bobg]

Anyone have a vendor that they can recommend for these preamp tubes? Vacuum Tube Valley and Tube World list this tube on their websites, but I have never done business with either. The tubes are sort of expensive and I would like to look at more options for purchasing.

Bob G.

[JoshK]

I've heard it said a few times that new production tubes of this type are as good as NOS.  Also the old russian military equivalents on ebay are suppose to be really good.

[Berndt]

I have a few circuits that use the ef86 variant and for the $$$ the telefunken ef804s is as good as its more expensive brother the ef806s.
I have tried some of the new production ef86's and the telefunkens are cleaner and smoother.
You should still be able to score ef804s's for 125$ a pair if you follow ebay for a while. They are 10,000 hour tubes so you shouldn't need too many.