Have you bought your back-up supply of tubes, yet?

8991XJ

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#1
It seems that there might be some tensions between the US and two of the countries that are major suppliers of tubes these days, China and Russia.

If things go one way the massive sanctions on Russia might cut off that supply of tubes and these are considered to be the better tubes available new today.

Do we even need to worry about this? I know my best amp and preamp use tubes.
 

J!m

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#2
I was a Sovtek dealer when the guitar shop was open and those tubes were stocked in the US. I don’t remember where they were now.

Back then they were preferred to the Chinese ones but that was a long time ago.

And Western Electric is making 300Bs anyway here in the states. No idea if they have others in the pipe line.
 

krellmk

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#4
Read this post.. trouble in the tube paradise
Shuguang has bit the dust
 

8991XJ

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#8
Read this post.. trouble in the tube paradise
Yes, I didn't even go into the situation with some Chinese tubes.

I could use a few quads of 6550/KT88/KT90 but the set in the amps now are very low hours. Fortunately these are easy to find and maybe there are piles of them somewhere. Wouldn't I like to find a box of nos GEs.
 

Bradrock

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#11
No worries; youtube has videos on making them at home. You can do some serious tube rolling when you craft your own!
 

Gepetto

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#14
Western Electric has some videos too- they cut and scrape the heater ribbon by hand…
The WE videos are quite a good watch. Who knew in 2022 that there was that kind of money in tubes. Glad they were able to acquire all the original Western Electric IP back again from companies that had no appreciation for it.

Somewhat amazing that they had to put some things on the back burner for a while to satisfy defense department needs. Critical Things still run on tubes I guess.
 

Lazarus Short

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#15
I read this thread, and decided to see if 6112 tubes were offered on that auction site. Yup - so I won't need to send my tube buffer to Musical Fidelity when the ten thousand hours are up.
 

Skratch

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#17
Years ago when I was buying a lot of Dynaco's they came with Mullard EL34's and some of the Mark 3's had the Genelex KT88 tubes in them. The tubes still command top dollar even after being 60 years old and still test very strong on my Hickok Tester
 

mr_rye89

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#18
I wish my ST-70 came with the real Mullards. I replaced the red-plate-y East German EL34s with New Sensor built Mullards and a Groove Tubes GZ34 which is Russian and looks like a real Mullard internally. The 7199s are RCA built and might be for sale when I put a new driver board on it.

Inb4 "get 6GH8 adapters". GOOD 6GH8s are getting harder to find and my TV needs them for the color demod circuit.
 
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