How large is the tube market today compared to the 1950’s and are current manufacturers sufficiently profitable to be able to invest in improvements to their manufacturing processes?
Why Can't Modern Tube Manufacturers Make a Proper Tube?
Current tube manufacturers, at least the ones I have tried should be utterly ashamed at their ineptness, apathy, ignorance, or whatever it is that makes them seemingly unable to make a tube properly.
And I never knew what I was missing before I tried reclaimed tubes from the 1950's, an era where people build things instead of ruining things.
The present manufactures are said to have the actual machinery to make tubes for which they have examples in hand and schematics on file, but they just can't do it.
Is this a case of Idiocracy? Are people just stupid today? The world and all creation do follow the 2nd rule of thermodynamics so I guess this is the case.
Listening to Black Plate RCA’s and Mullards in my system, even for a short time made it glaringly obvious that modern manufactures are embarrassingly inadequate. There is absolutely no comparison.
Why can't modern tube manufacturers make a proper tube?
1. lack of IQ?
2. Apathy?
3. Lack of Materials?
4. Lost knowledge?
81 responses Add your response
I heard that they only had enough of some of the original materials for WE 300b to make something like 30,000 pairs. Obviously that original 300b recipe is long gone but I wanted to have a spare so I actually bought a spare pair just in case. Western Electric has acquired a lot of tooling to make small signal tubes. I heard that they bought a bunch of the old Ei factory tooling and machinery. Hopefully they will be producing quality tubes in the near future. They will be doing common power tubes. I really wish they would produce a 6922 but i think its not on their radar like guitar amp and common power tubes are. As for quality , my WE 300b tubes still test like new after a year of use, a lot of use. They sound great , I hope to get a long life out of thsm |
I guess we use different tubes. I have 50 tubes in my current systems, and have used tubes for decades… although less in number. I got a whistle in a tube a few years ago after several years of use and had on tube that died upon arrival. The rest have performed flawlessly for there entire life or are still in use. |
I also have had pretty good luck overall. A lot of the tubes I replaced had a llt of hours and with the getter disappearing and silkscreen evaporated it was time to replace before meltdown. If you want close to zero maintenance then a Solid State amp is best. I love tubes, I do, but they aren't always practical I just bought a awesome little integrated amp. I set it up in my main room and it sounded so good I left it there for a couple of weeks. It's in another room now and i find myself using it a lot. Turing tube gear on and off for short listening periods isn't really the best thing for tubes. Or when it 's 95 ° ... Now I'll come home , turn the little system on , listen a little and turn it off . It get's me 80% there but I will always use my main system for longer periods |
Ghdprentice makes a good point about the longevity of well made tubes. A 6922 is rated for 10,000 hours , as are a lot of other small signal tubes I use e180f in my amp and have about a dozen or more pairs of NOS tubes , Mullard , Amperex, GE, Telefunken.. all relatively cheap, except the Tele. Those were $75 I basically have a lifetime of tubes for that amp, also have a dozen 274b and 5r4gy tubes . After a year of use they all tested like new or close. I can run that thing every day for years and never run out. I probably went overboard but at least when I'm dead the next owner won't have to worry |
I wouldn't necessarily generalize things. Back in the 40's, 50's and 60's tubes were in everything and were literally a dime a dozen. So maybe the tubes that are around today were just heartier than the rest and the vast majority weren't so great. So it's possible that in 50 years, the batches made today by New Sensor and the such will have survivors that are better performers and audiophiles will be lamenting why can't we have the same quality tubes as audiophiles had in 2023. |
Hard disagree. I have a huge collection of vintage tubes and modern Russian production are excellent, imo. Even some of the Chinese tubes are quite good. Some of the worst sounding tubes in my collection are actually vintage RCA, late Sylvania, or those Philips ECG. The old tubes were built to a higher standard of quality and consistency, I'll give you that. Even the insides of most old tubes tend to be meticulous and gorgeous. They can also take more abuse and keep ticking. But to replicate that today would be impossible due to exorbitant costs and environmental regulations. For what you get in great sound and reasonable reliability (after lots of screening) the Russian tubes are really a bargain. Our amazing sounding modern high-end tube amps and preamps exist largely thanks to affordable Russian tubes supporting that industry. |
My uncle who I am estranged from was a stereo and TV repairman and has a basement full of tubes. Hundreds of not thousands. A while back I said we should go through those , test them and make some money. He said that’s stupid, no one’s buying those. He has some holy grail stuff and is too lazy to sort through it. there’s guys like him here and there. That stuff is likely to get thrown away. A friend does clean outs. He used to drop off tubes here and there. Most were junk but stuff like new 6v6 rca definitely are not. Those days are long gone |
I won’t toss the baby out with the bath water. There are actually some terrific current production vacuum tubes as well as some not so terrific. I would not generalize. I have used current production EML 300b tubes in my SET mono blocks for many years. First pair lasted nearly 12 years with very heavy hours of use during that time. Simply splendid sound quality and zero reliability issues. The 101D DHT tubes In my preamplifier are current production Psvane.W.E. Replica. Again, splendid sound quality and very reliable under very frequent/heavy usage. So it depends on which current production tubes one is referencing. The amplifier’s rectifier and driver tubes are 1950s vintage. Same era (1950s) of tubes in my DAC. I’ve been very happy with this mixture of current and vintage tubes n my audio system. The sound is intoxicatingly natural. Charles |
many current production tubes are fine. some new production sound better than some old production. |
I'm generally not a fan of new production preamp, rectifiers . or 6L6s . The exceptions being Sophia Electric 6SN7s and 274B tubes which are very nice sounding tubes. (haven't tried their 12au7s or 12ax7s). I have been pleased with new production Gold Lion and Psvane KT88s , and Psvane & Linlai 845s. Not a fan of JJ, Electron Harmoniz, or Tungsol regardless of tube type . Otherwise, I use old stock preamp, rectifier, 6L6GCs and 7189As |
I have 1950s & 1960 vintage curve-tracer matched RCAs Black plates, and 1965 Blackburn plant Mullard tubes, along with various new production tubes for my own Quicksilver amps. Some of the new tubes compare favorably, or better. What "modern manufacturers" and "embarrassingly inadequate tubes" have you tried? |
Looking back at the 1950's and 1960's, remember, everything was made with tubes, except for mainframe computers and exotic aerospace applications. And they weren't all that cheap ... multiply the prices by ten to get a better idea of the real cost. Tubes are a very small niche market today, orders of magnitude smaller, and if it wasn't for demand from guitarists, there would probably be no tube factories anywhere in the world. As it is, audiophiles piggyback on to the guitar-amp market, and are at least ten times smaller, or maybe twenty times smaller. Fortunately, the middle-class Chinese audio fans are mad about tubes, so there is significant domestic demand in China. The small demand makes robot automated assembly un-economic, and the R&D budget, compared to the 1950's, just isn't there. It's one thing to have the Department of Defense pay for reliability research, and throw hundreds of top engineers at the problem, and where we sit now, with a only a handful of design engineers worldwide, and none of them with DOD-sized budget. |
Small market for vacuum tubes I guess and not a current technology like it was back in the day. Relegated to a small niche, retro, antiquated, and vintage applications..sad but there are companies like Western Electric who see some market potential and are at least trying to produce popular tubes for audiophiles. Cudos to them! |
Tony; I have a few observations that may help explain the nearly universal declining quality: 1) Finite Element Analysis. The quest to do as much as possible with as little as possible. Sounds like utopia but in reality "over-engineering" as we used to call it was making a thing to function/perform using at 80% or less of it's capacity. 2) The idea that most consumers don' t care as much about quality as they do about price. This is why "built to last" was shelved and "great value" (cough, cough) replaced it. 3) Planned obsolescence. Making a rapidly depleting product that requires the consumer to re-buy it often. This is often accompanied by "laws" that protect the connected at the peril of the customer./consumer. 4) Rising incompetence. This is almost universal in the USA and is a direct product of moral relativism. The patron saint of todays young adults is Mediocratese. His motto is "Meh. good enough."
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There was a UK company originally making medical tubes that came out with updated things like 12 series with considerable improvements a number of years back. Never heard of them since. Basically, the market is tiny and the cost is high if I were to venture a guess. One can emulate the distortion products in a transistor circuit and using various FETs, do a pretty good job of the transductance curves. I don't think we understand the "musicality" well enough to emulate in DSP but I bet some are working on it. |
@tonydennison - regarding WE tubes they presently are only manufacturing their 300B, but as noted elsewhere in the thread their intention is to produce some other tube variants at their Rossville Works facility. https://www.westernelectric.com/rossville-works Here's WE's links for getting on their mailing list for product annaouncements, and direct contact page. https://www.westernelectric.com/get-notified https://www.westernelectric.com/contact Goggle is your friend
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"In classical rhetoric and logic begging the question or assuming the conclusion is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument’s premises assume the truth of the conclusion. A question-begging inference is valid, in the sense that the conclusion is as true as the premise, but it is not a valid argument." |
"I looked at the Tak’s and they were over $1K a piece....No way I’m doing that." Me neither. That’s one reason I have jumped off the tube bandwagon, along with convenience, the uncertainty regarding actual quality of what you buy unless from select sources, and being a fan of technical innovation and advances in general that cut into the value of an old time technology like vacuum tubes increasingly over time. As time goes on, like most anything of quality that is vintage and still desirable (much is not), the "best" tubes will only cost even more. How long can people make that work? I also like wine well enough but the best is not even something that I aspire to there.
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@ps Oh...Are they? |
I’m willing to bet there were far more failed tubes in the early years then most here would like to admit. just the sheer amount made would dictate to a much larger failure rate then we see today. there was also budget cheep tubes made back then so its all relevant. The good tubes made in the past are now stupid money. new production tube have also come a long way in the past decade to the point i think they are on par with or close to the average NOS stuff. lets face it the really good NOS tubes are getting long in the tooth for availability so there are only the mediocre NOS tube really available in any quantity. I’m just happy someone is trying to make new tubes still and good quality ones at that. |
@tonydennison If you’re going to question the IQ of modern tube makers, and decry the "meh, good enough" work ethic, it might be a better look to spend a few minutes mastering the use of block-quote formatting. You can also combine multiple quotes and responses into one comment ;) |
This place is more of a web 1.0 forum / BB than it is social media. And just to be clear - you’re good with "meh, good enough" in online communication style, but not with tube manufacturing, right? Lots of guys here like to shake their fist at the clouds. It’s a wonder young folks aren’t flocking to this hobby lol. |
