The JJ EF806S took several years to develop. Love 'em, need 'em, they'll drive you nuts. EF86's are extremely high gain Pentodes that first saw action back in the 50's and famously with Vox in the 60's. Even back then they were pesky buggers and phased out ASAP. Fast forward to present time and players have rediscovered the magic of overdriven Pentodes.
The Gold Pin JJ EF806S is based on the same construction as the original JJ EF806S. The internal components go through additional selection and processing during assembly. After working with these tubes for several years we can confirm they do test more consistently and sound noticeably different than the original JJ EF806S.
We have a multi-tiered noise/microphonics test for these tubes. In most cases all of our standard offerings will be quiet and stable right out of the box. In combo amps we highly recommend using one of our EuroDampers. For extreme applications contact us.
All our preamp tubes are stringently tested for noise and microphonics using Amplitrex testers driving an external amp. There is no extra charge for low noise and microphonics testing like with other tube vendors. If a tube does not pass our strict performance criteria it's tossed or sent back to JJ Electronic for evaluation.