Friggen' tubes

[Luckie]

I wonder if anyone has thought of starting up high-quality 'merican tube manufacturing again.
Such a company may already exist, but I don't use tube gear so I wouldn't know...

 

[NecroticImbecil]

I switched from SS ampd to tube amps because I kept burning up the transisters.

No problem, just a get a new set of transistors and pop them into the transistor sockets. Oh wait, it isn't quite that easy is it?

 

[AwkwardLoudness]

I don't believe that there is any form of real quality control on tubes
manufactured today. They ship anything.

It's true that the current tube manufacturers do not test their own tubes to screen out the bad ones. The reputable distributors are the ones who test the tubes. I recommend buying tubes from distributors who have solid reputation.

I wonder if anyone has thought of starting up high-quality 'merican tube manufacturing again.
Such a company may already exist, but I don't use tube gear so I wouldn't know...

Environmental regulations and labor costs in the USA prevent this from happening.

 

[96tbird]

And forget buying NOS to capture quality. It's full of counterfeits because no one can actually tell by looks or a box.

.

In many cases yes but in the case of the Russkie ones I just received, the box ink is faded and the paper smells a little musty and are not really "boxes", rather square tubes that have flaps of card sealed shut with rusty old staples that have stained the paper. They are marked VII/81 or July 1981. I have no doubt that they are exactly that. And they sound fantastic, I guess I never thought about it because the 7027's worked fine, the getters were beginning to show deterioration though so I figured I'd give the 6p3s-e's a go. Probably the first new tubes the old V4-b has seen as the ones I pulled are all Magnavox 7027's. Nice.

 

[JimmyM]

i buy my nos tubes from a place called www.vacuumtubesinc.com half an hour from my house. have i gotten bad ones from him? yes. but i seriously doubt i ever got any counterfeits, and he guarantees them for 30 days so i was able to return the bad ones. i'll never stop using tubes, no matter how bad the quality of new ones get. and 12ax7's are so easy to change out and so cheap and plentiful, so why let that stop you?

i will say that with the quality of tubes the way they are these days, it does make me appreciate groove tubes a little bit more. they cost more for the rebranding, but they do seem to weed out the bad ones. rarely do i ever get a failure from them.

 

[LGT]

Environmental regulations and labor costs in the USA prevent this from happening.

I'm curious, what are the environmental problems of tube manufacture? Is it a certain material in them?

 

[seamonkey]

In many cases yes but in the case of the Russkie ones I just received, the box ink is faded and the paper smells a little musty and are not really "boxes", rather square tubes that have flaps of card sealed shut with rusty old staples that have stained the paper. They are marked VII/81 or July 1981. I have no doubt that they are exactly that. And they sound fantastic, I guess I never thought about it because the 7027's worked fine, the getters were beginning to show deterioration though so I figured I'd give the 6p3s-e's a go. Probably the first new tubes the old V4-b has seen as the ones I pulled are all Magnavox 7027's. Nice.

Sure some people may be getting real NOS. But there's a lot more NOS advertised than what you'd expect to be available. Musty boxes, and rusted staples aren't hard to re-create. You'd might expect the pins of the tubes to also show corrosion if they weren't gold plated. And I've heard some counterfeits have their pins gold plated to hide their age.

Of course they sound good - but what do they test to?

 

[levis76]

No problem, just a get a new set of transistors and pop them into the transistor sockets. Oh wait, it isn't quite that easy is it?

Sure it is. What's so hard about clipping the old transistor out, desoldering and cleaning the contacts, and soldering the new one in. Simple.

Tube tone is great, but at a show, you and the sound guy are the only people that know that. Everyone else is like "Why is the bass so loud?"

Seriously though, to the OP, if the occasional bad tube upsets you this much, then tubes might not be for you. I just sold my beloved 400+ because I have three kids and I can't afford to fix it when a tube does go out (the 400s like to blow bias resistors, input fuses, and burn up sockets when a tube shorts out, and thats if you're lucky). Rather than waiting for that to happen everytime I play, I made the decision to go with a hybrid. If a preamp tube goes out, it isn't going to need $500 of repair work and be down for a week while parts come in, it just needs another $15 tube available at every music store in the world.

 

[96tbird]

Test... You got me there! The pins had the white crusties on them, but not rusty. They work great! Test complete. Look man they were $8.50 each. Just saying for that price, why not give a go?

NOS free world supply? yes, too many available, but the USSR pumped everything out in stupid quantities just to keep people working. Stockpiled; nothing to do with supply and demand.

Maybe fake, don't care, $8.50. Highly rated type with the hifi diy set, Cool.

 

[AwkwardLoudness]

Environmental regulations and labor costs in the USA prevent this from happening.

I'm curious, what are the environmental problems of tube manufacture? Is it a certain material in them?

Strontium is the primary culprit.

I should clarify that there are a couple active vacuum tube manufacturers in the USA, but they do not serve the audio market. They only make tubes for industrial applications such as radar and medical equipment. Those are tubes that must be good quality

All of the current large volume manufacturers audio vacuum tube are located in Russia, Slovakia, and China.

 

[levis76]

Strontium is the primary culprit.

I should clarify that there are a couple active vacuum tube manufacturers in the USA, but they do not serve the audio market. They only make tubes for industrial applications such as radar and medical equipment. Those are tubes that must be good quality

All of the current large volume manufacturers audio vacuum tube are located in Russia, Slovakia, and China.

...and the only people that care if those tubes are good quality are the end users, us.

 

[seamonkey]

Sure it is. What's so hard about clipping the old transistor out, desoldering and cleaning the contacts, and soldering the new one in. Simple.

Grab an early SS amp and you'll find power transistors mounted in sockets. Transistors fail so rarely that they don't warrant the cost of a sockets anymore.