Why aren't new vacuum tubes as good as old ones?

The company is RCH Labs. phone number is 775.410.8798

Tubes these days are fired incorrectly so there are contaminants caused by the getter being under or over-fired.

Cathode structures are not being built with proper care. Contaminates get introduced, causing grid contamination during the operation of the tube and also causing arcing as the cathode coating flakes off the cathode.

There is a new US manufacturer of tubes in Carson City, NV that was showing at THE Show just last month. They are starting with a new 6L6 and expect to have a KT88, 2A3, 300b, 6SN7, 12A-series. They seem to be well funded. RCH Labs. The 6L6s they had on display looked quite nice :)

The tubes they are making in Carson City take advantage of modern techniques- computer modeling and lazer cutting so they have avoided expensive dies. I'm very interested to see their production tubes!

I have high hopes for this venture. It sounds like they will be able to make tubes that are even better than the NOS classics.

I have to say we have had extremely good luck with the run-of-the-mill Chinese 6SN7. We've been using it for about 14 years. Its not the best sounding tube, but its not bad, and they've been pretty reliable.

I'd love to if they made tubes that we use.

Wolf, I know some of the techs at ARC. They use the KT-120s, but apparently really have to weed through them as many of them arc (no pun intended) prematurely.

However its a pretty neat tube- lotta power handling.

One way to look at it is they (Russia and China) don't take as much care, but there will still be tubes that hold up. We've seen some of our Russian power tubes (6AS7G) go for well over 20,000 hours. But that is by no means the norm...

I think they are taking greater care with the premium tubes we are seeing- like the Psvane, TJ Music and Sophia. Our customers have been giving use good feedback on those (which at this point has mostly been the 6SN7- which is our main signal-processing tube).

quote]What is the definition of "good"? Sonic quality? Durability? Given the longevitiy of some tubes (300b comes to mind) and unless a tube fails "early," it will be hard to prove that new tubes are predictably shorter-lived compared to older ones. Or am I wrong?[/quote]

A 'good' tube sounds good and lasts a long time.