- Apr 22, 2016
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- Breaking even is the new making money.
But then again, I really feel weird about paying $85(!) per tung sol right now... jeeeze I think the price went up TODAY.
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With Tube Prices So High, Worth Looking into NOS?
- Thread starter Zak TMD
- Start date
- Feb 12, 2006
- 61,051
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- Development Engineer-Mesa Boogie, Development Engineer-Genzler (pedals), Product Support-Genz Benz
$20 more for a quite possibly poorer quality tube is a puzzling thought indeed.
I seem to recall Steven Fryette saying that it's possible for NOS tubes to leak which will contaminate the vacuum inside the bottle and potentially lead to premature failure. All of the amp builders I listen to have no issues with current production other than a few particular issues that are very specific to their amps (mainly in the pre-amp).
At this point, I feel really good about the fact that all my gigs are ampless.
Tubes may continue to get more expensive in general so reliability is your best bet. I have never had new production tubes go bad but I have had NOS stuff die - though more due to other problems in an amp than just the tube failing on its own.
With output tubes, a lot will depend on how you bias them. I have never pushed my tubes hard to find out but I'm told that for the 30W 6L6 family the ideal grid (fixed) bias point is about 65-70% of plate current and if they are biased hotter than that for tonal reasons tube life is shortened with an increased risk of failure (perhaps even catastrophic failure).
Although Viva Tubes seems to have a big supply these days.
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I just checked Eurotubes, where I get mine, and the prices have remained stable for a long time for the ones I use. I only run JJ tubes anyway.
I have but the incidents were few and far between and haven't occurred in a long time. The first Russian 7591s available here were pretty unreliable, for instance. In the 1990s there really was a considerable difference in quality between NOS consumer tubes and the then current Chinese and Russian tubes and I think that era created a mystique about NOS being the only way to go. 30 years is a long time and the Russian and Chinese plants got their quality control act together years ago. They are very capable of making quality products now.
As @agedhorse points out, a lot of NOS tubes are poor quality themselves (American tube manufacturing during the last 15 years of high-volume tube production [late '70s and '80s] was doomed and everybody knew it. Tubes were being phased out of every product that had used them for decades and the manufacturers were not about to invest money, resources or engineering smarts on a dead technology) but NOS is such a broad term, what does it even mean? Tung-Sol from the '50s? Sylvania from the '70s? Tungsram from the late '80s? Mazda from the '60s? Have they been rebranded (there was plenty of that going on even as early as the '60s)? Soviet military spec? US or British military spec? Aerospace? It's impossible to lump all these tubes together as they all fell into vastly different eras of quality control (some very good and some very bad) but that's exactly what tube dealers do. To them it's all NOS, so it's all premium-priced and people buy into it. There are excellent NOS tubes out there still but it's a crap-shoot. You have no way of knowing whether or not they were stored well, transported well, tested effectively or whether they were particularly good to begin with and that wilderness is an ideal opportunity for snake oil salesmen. I have many hundreds of old stock tubes in my basement (mostly NOS and some used)* and each gets tested with two different transconductance testers before I put them into service and I can attest that I have pulled pristine NOS tubes out of the box and had them fail. Not many and not often, but enough to be skeptical of any "mojo" that is purported to be living in NOS tubes. At least with current production tubes you know what you're getting.
*It's very seldom that I've bought NOS tubes. Most of the tubes I have were given to me by people before there was any sort of market for them. Mostly, the only NOS tubes I've bought were types that weren't available as new production.
For a really broad selection of NOS to compare prices with what you're seeing for New ones, take a look at Brent Jessee's site. A huge selection, knowledgeable guy to deal with and what I consider to be fair prices for NOS. No affiliation other than satisfied customer.
BRENT JESSEE RECORDING HOMEPAGE
BRENT JESSEE RECORDING HOMEPAGE
Passinwind
I know nothing.
- Dec 3, 2003
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- Designer/Toaster Tech @ Passinwind Electronics
I just today received a shipment of three '50s RCA 12ax7s and a matched pair of early '60s Mazda hospital-grade 12au7s from Brent himself, and I always have had good experiences with tubes from him.
Great minds think etc etc etc.....
I have a matched pair of these on order from Brent for the front end of my Ceriatone Aunt Peg and waiting patiently for them to arrive:
My father worked at the big GE plant in Schenectady, NY throughout the 1970's into the 80's.
