Tube question

Warrenh, if you'll head over to www.vintagetubeservices.com you'll find page after page of historical insights ( & photos) offering glimpses into the manufacturing processes of bygone times. Modern tube manufacturers have sales ONLY to the musical instrument and audio market, they do not have the support of military, television, and radio markets that endowed manufacturers of the past with much greater resources. Yes, the Russians & Chinese are filling a market void, but to reach the heights of manufacturing prowess greats of the past achieved would require much greater investment in R&D, facilities, and worker training. The current size of the tube market doesn't make that greater investment a wise decision from a managerial perspective. If you were to quadruple your investment in manufacturing, you'd have to recoup that in greater sales volume or you're out of business.

EAT manufacturers audiophile tubes in the EC.
Very expensive but sounds as good as it gets...

D Visser

Right now the current Shuguang KT88 and 12AX7 are on par with the legends of audio.

But, as has been mentioned, in the past, when the military and commercial (telecommunications, radio/tv, computers) electronics industries relied on vacuum tubes as their lifeblood, the importance of building the best tubes possible was light years away from a niche industry that supplies guitarists (mostly) and audiophiles (not many of us).

I agree it has a lot to do with demand, but...
It also has a lot to do with the engineers today vs. in the past. Today, the best engineers are in semiconductors/solid state designs because that's where the money is. In the past, the state of the art was vacuum tube technology, so the best and brightest worked in those fields and the fields that supported them.

Aren't these tubes a very simple design? How complex are they really? That difficult to duplicate greateness of yore? Looking at the inside one of these babies it just doesn't look that complicated. But then again what do I know? Anyway, I'm beating this to death. BTW, Andy Bowman of Vintagetubeservices.com, you mentioned, would disagree about the 12AX7s. I'm not going to cancel my 4 NOS 12AX7s nor my 6DJ8s, but on down the road, you can bet I'm going to sample some Shuguangs and hear what's up. I will then have a referent. The 12AX7s I have in my amp are counterfeits. Andy says Amperex are counterfeited the most, but all the big names have their problems with fakes. Man does he know tubes. A wealth of info that overloaded my tube ignorant brain. He was highly recommended to me from some other audiphools. And most of all? HONEST. When he says it's a NOS. It's a NOS. As you can see from his website, he have the digs to know.