I bought a matched pair of TAD 6L6GCM-STR redbase tubes, for use in my latest homebrew amp
which is a Hammond AO-63 chassis converted to a 40W bass amp known as the Basserator.
The tubes work ok but the bias balance had to be set to 40mA on one tube and 50mA on the other
to achieve the minimum hum balance at idle. The amp balances within about 1mA with an old/used pair of
RCA 6L6GB tubes that are fairly well matched. I have to wonder how good the matching process is on the TADs.

Just installed 8 of these in my Mesa simul 395 along with 4 of the TAD 70025’s and am loving it. Nice balanced tone. Lots of attack even with a ton of gain.

Just installed 8 of these in my Mesa simul 395 along with 4 of the TAD 70025’s and am loving it. Nice balanced tone. Lots of attack even with a ton of gain.

Sent 2 quads of these back to the Tube Depot, and the last quad back to AES.

I don't blame the resellers unless they are testing these again themselves once they receive them. I especially don't blame AES since they are depending on TAD to sell them supposedly well tested tubes. Whatever specific criteria TAD is using is not cutting it, in my very humble opinion.

I received so many exceptional tubes from TAD tubes in past years. Don't know where these Red Base 6L6's come from as the old Shuguang factory in China is no more.

Back to Russian tubes again, or at least Mesa branded tubes. The Mesa's are not the best sounding, but I've owned a boat load of them over the years without the problems I'm experiencing with these recent batches of TAD's.

For supposedly matched tubes, the quads I received differed as much as 40mA w/475VDC plates between tubes. I don't trust the ones I received to last with any dependability.

But what made them all unusable for me was too much noise. They crackled and hissed when put to task. Every single time on power up. Some would stabilize and settle down after 5 to 10 minutes, some would not.

I give up for a while after trying 3 different quads of them.

Great clean and clear headroom.

I loved the Winged-C 6L6's for the 1945 31H Leslie we have at our church. They ar no longert available. For several years I have been lookling for something that was that good. I think I have found it in the Tube Amp Doctor 6L6GCM-STR Redbase. I installed a matched quad of thses in the Leslie power amp, and they sound great! I will have to wait and see how they hold up, as I just put them in less than a week ago. I normally replace the power tubes in this Leslie once a year. I'm hoping they sound as good as they do now: powerful deep bass (32' pedal stops), and nice bright highs (1' drawbars), so they get worked all the way down to 16 Hz on the 32' low C on the pedals, and still have that screaming punch I like on the high notes.