So will say this, you used to be able to order just the standard tubes from amplified parts and be okay but now you are much better paying the extra couple of bucks to get tubes that have been tested for low noise and performance. Take that for what it’s worth but that’s just my 2 cents. I won’t order the untested ones anymore.
I don't know if it was just because of me or if there were others, but I like to think I was a contributing factor in that. Story time!
When I first started building my pedals at a relatively large scale, I was ordering most of my stuff from CE Distribution, which is the wholesale arm of Amplified Parts. This included tubes, and I would place large and frequent orders for preamp tubes. I would get a bad tube every now and then from an order of 100, which wasn't great but wasn't a huge deal. You can theoretically reach out to their customer service and they'll refund or replace new tubes. But eventually I started testing every tube myself to make sure I was only putting good tubes in my builds.
Well on one order I had like 20 tubes test bad from an order of 50. I reached out to their customer service and let them know, and they took the tubes back and refunded me for them (they offered replacements, but I said I would just get some on my next order), but it was an inconvenience because it left some of my builds without tubes for a while. Shortly after that I talked to someone about TubeDepot, where I was told they actually test every tube before shipping them. I placed an order with them to try them out, and sure enough every tube tested good. Their bulk discounts weren't as steep as I was getting from CE Distribution, but I decided it was worth it to get pre-tested tubes.
Fast forward 6 months or so, and I get a phone call from a sales rep at CE Distribution. They said they just wanted to reach out and find out why I stopped placing my big orders with them, particularly for tubes. I told them the truth, I was paying more to get pre-tested tubes from somewhere else, and I said that if CE/Amplified Parts were to offer pre-tested tubes I would be likely to switch back to them as a supplier, because I honestly didn't have anything else against them. He thanked me for letting him know and said he would pass the message along to his manager.
Fast-forward a couple months and I was re-tubing one of my amplifiers. I've always bought power tubes from them because I like the options for Apex matching, and I figured I would take a peek at their preamp tubes while I was there, lo and behold, they now offer Apex tested preamp tubes!
Again there may have been other factors leading to them offering that, but it made me smile because I felt like I was actually listened to. I still order from TubeDepot every now and then because they're geographically closer to me so I can get things faster when I need them, but the performance tested option at CE/Amplified Parts now is great and I get them most often.
