Vintage Tube Rebranding

[mechanicalmastering]

Recently had an experience that shook my belief in the indisputable superior quality of NOS MUllards: I got a new ART Pro Channel II and before swapping tubes to NOS Mullards, I decided to listen to and record a couple vocal tracks with the original Chinese tubes so I could compare the glorious improvement once I put the Mullards in. Surprise, surprise, surprise: the Chinese tubes sounded pretty good! Not much different from the Mullards and possibly...choke, choke: better sounding? In fact I can't believe I'm even saying this but I might put the Chinese tubes back in. A couple of things might be going on here. Maybe the Chinese are getting way better at quality control, possibly I just had a lucky accident and have 2 China tubes that came out good at the factory by accident, or the ART circuit has been optimized for the characteristics of the particular tube made at the particular Chinese factory.
I'm curious now. Anybody else noticed a recent improvement in the quality of Chinese tubes?

Man, that's wild, I hope someone can chime in on this.

[J-ROB]

That's what I was saying above. New production tubes do not necessarily sound bad.

And there is a lot of play in the notion of what sounds "good"-- not to mention differences in equipment that skew how particular tubes might perform.

Now as for longevity or reliability of Chinese tubes vs. Mullards...u'mm....my money is on vintage Mullards.