Telefunken EF86 click click click

The question with any NOS tube purchase is ? Where did you buy them? If it was our own Bowie, probably the most trusted source of audio tubes. If it was PM him I’m sure all will be taken care of.

Welcome jacklord to RGO!  If you can return the two teles you just bought, I would do so.
Did you buy it from ebay or reverb where the feedback for the seller is noted?
Did you use paypal to buy it?
Did you buy it in the country where you live?
Is there a diamond etched in the bottom of the two so called "tested new" tele tubes?
There are quite a few possible remedies.
It seems like other tubes work in your mic, so that is a sign that it is not the mic.
Bowie is King on these issues - agreed.  And I think he even posted today.  So, maybe he will see this.  bowie

Keep us posted!

I didn’t notice it was your first post, forgive me for not welcoming you to our corner of the internet, there are bigger but none better.

Believe little peeps on the net you don’t know tell you about their”nos” only polished by grandma tubes: believe everything bowie tells you: nuff said.

Wish I could but it shouldn’t be clicking or making any noise.

I am not an expert in how tubes actually work, but they have a thermal component to them and physical parts. in this case they are part of boosting a micro phonic signal so the click could be an almost imperceptible sound but now amplified.

If you haven’t, you can clean the pins with a deoxit spray ckeaner or if you have very fine wet dry sandpaper as you may have an inconsistent connection.

But the fact that you only hear it with the one new to you tube, suggests it is just defective and personally, I don’t trust the seller.

If you know anyone else with the wa67 Mike, trying swapping it and see, but I think it’s flawed.

You could always send it to bowie to confirm.

Many thanks for taking the time to answer. Ok, I will. I'm just worried if a bad tube can ruin a microphone which is something I do not know but something I'd like to know but of course not by experience. I cannot financially afford to replace this microphone.

Think about it.

Any tube can fail at any moment and circuit designers allow for this in their designs - otherwise we'd all be praying and crossing are fingers every time we turned on any tube gear.

Signal level tubes are usually safe if they go bad.

Power tubes in guitar amps can cause more problems when they fail as the current involved in way, way higher.

Put the EHX EF86 back into your WA67 - do is work as it did before? 
There's your answer

Thanks for all that. The click comes from audio only. The EHX works as it did originally. The working Tele makes the clicking sound for a few seconds then audio appears clearly and sound is superior to the EHX.

I appreciate all who chimed in on this thread. I've learned a lot. I will update when the other Tele (with guaranteed no question return) shows up and has been tested. In the meanwhile I'll put the clicking one in and see what happens after a couple days.

Many thanks again!

Check the tube out in a dark room while it's running. If you see the orange glow change when popping, I wonder if they are causing a problem with the power supply..

Not certain if you bought it new but Chad Kelly mods Warm mikes, basically upgrades them.

Food for thought.

Tubes are usually sold as "tested" but that doesn't mean that they are (spoiler; they often aren't). It's about as scammy a market as unearthed artifacts because buyers cant tell if the seller is lying or not, or maybe just clueless. Old tube testers don't help. I could probably go on ebay right now and, within 10min, find a dozen listings where sellers w/ 100% positive feedback are lying (either selling used tubes as NOS in the wrong box, or selling something as a Mullard/Telefunken/etc when it was not made by those companies). It's unreal what goes on there. Expect to get ripped off. I'm a so-called expert and I still get ripped off. I just received a case of 50 NOS tubes from Europe that was misrepresented by a large parts supplier. That's a months pay gone. It can be tedious and expensive to go through them and, depending how picky you are, end up with a few quiet ones.

As far as the safety of the mic, it depends on the circuit. I don't like to leave potentially dead tubes running because I've measured power supplies while this is happening, just to see, and the filament voltage can sometimes go to scary levels. They usually won't "wake up" but you can try a couple things to see if there's hope. One is scrubbing the pins until they shine. A spray won't do it, you need to physically remove the oxidation. You can also try to seat them at an angle. Even though it seems impossible that a tube could be inserted and not make contact, it happens. Many sockets these days have poor tolerances and the oversized pins of the stock tubes stretch the terminals even further. Vintage tube pins are slim and sometimes don't connect. To remedy, tilt the tube at a slight angle (think; leaning tower) to force contact. Just don't let it touch the body of the mic or you'll get hum.

Not expensive :

www.signalartelectronics.com/product-page/warm-audio-wa-67-upgrade