Sveltana Wing-C tubes out of production

[soundmasterg]

The pricing is strange for sure. Here right from the factory the 6550s are $27.60 each but just 1/2 mile away is the testing and administrative office for Sovtek/New Sensor, and the under 10 quant. price is $28.98. How much are distributors in the US selling them for now?
a Russian made 12AX7 is $8.63 each for $1500 worth but $11.90 for 1. My my cost in China is $4.70 for tubes that are quieter. Chinese EL-34 are $6.80, Russian are $16.39 for 1.
The best "12AX7" find is the 6.3 volt only fil. made in Russia for a long time numbered 6Н2п that has the heater on 4&5 and pin 9 is an internal shield between the two triodes. They have not been in production for a long time but there are many thousands in warehouses around the country. I have about 100 of them and use them in new builds or where the owner knows not to plug in a 12AX7 without moving a wire. Here, they sell for $0.75 or so. They are great for V1 because of their internal shield and higher gain than a 12AX7, yet have low micro-phonics. They have some interesting planar 6.3v single triodes in 7 pin packages that are the lowest in micro-phonics I have found than ex-Svetlana engineer gave to me. I used them in a prototype mic preamp that tests really well.

Antique Electronics sells Winged C 6550's here for around $50 each, and their wholesale arm, CE Distribution sells them about $10 more than your price at the factory. You can get a JJ 6550 for $36 and a JJ KT88 for $38 from Eurotubes and while their quality has been spotty at times, when you get a good JJ KT88 they last a long time and sound fantastic, especially in Sunn bass amps. The Sovtek/EH tubes are cheaper and the Chinese stuff is cheaper still...so with all the Guitar Centers selling the Chinese and EH/Sovtek tubes and the price difference, Svetlanas just haven't been competitive for a couple years. Everyone knew they were better tubes though.

Greg

[drewl]

I meant the people/experience/expertise when I said "assets".

[tubeswell]

Antique Electronics sells Winged C 6550's here for around $50 each, and their wholesale arm, CE Distribution sells them about $10 more than your price at the factory. You can get a JJ 6550 for $36 and a JJ KT88 for $38 from Eurotubes and while their quality has been spotty at times, when you get a good JJ KT88 they last a long time and sound fantastic, especially in Sunn bass amps. The Sovtek/EH tubes are cheaper and the Chinese stuff is cheaper still...so with all the Guitar Centers selling the Chinese and EH/Sovtek tubes and the price difference, Svetlanas just haven't been competitive for a couple years. Everyone knew they were better tubes though.

Greg

B-but, where would we be without middlemen?

[big_teee]

Maybe that explains why the JJ Power tubes have gone up several dollars a piece in recent weeks.
T

[tubeswell]

There'll be flow-on effects for sure

[daz]

Cr@p! There's no other EL34 i like mean as much in my amp. I know of a place that has had them cheap for a while now....i'm there asap with a pocket fulla money ! At my age it will be easy to afford a lifetime supply. Can't believe the most highly regarded current prod 34's and maybe 6L6's would just go away tho I gotta think someone would buy the patent and tooling.

[J M Fahey]

Well, that's terrible.
But I guess they should not shut down the *full* glass tube line.
I'm sure they make tons of obscure or little used tubes, not much damage in shutting *those*, but maybe concentrating *only* on 12AX7, 6L6 and EL34, although boring, might keep a small dedicated line alive.
I think any tube sales volume needs to justify making, say, at least 50 or 100 a day , which does not look that much but means 1500 or 3000 a year.

Or as an option, it was mentioned here that "somebody" had bough EI Serbia tube making machinery, but the Government didn't authorize it leaving the Country.
*Maybe* they could buy unused Svetlana machines instead.
Just dreaming.

[km6xz]

Juan, the factory is better off turning off the lights in that production area than keep it running for a few thousands tubes. The complex is quite large and they probably have lost money on the small volume of glass tube sales for decades. Small production lines can afford to make only a few thousand a month. The plant complex takes up hundreds of acres. At one time they produced more vacuum tubes and light bubs than any other company so I can see how the board found it less attractive to stay in production for nostalgia purposes since there was no large market out there to capture even if someone got a clue about marketing.
As was mentioned, tubes are too high because there are too many salesmen in the middle, each taking their 20-30%.
If there was a big market to cater to, modern production techniques, automation and the great advances in materials research would mean cheap tubes at low prices. But no real manufacturer would bother with a total world wide demand of only 4,000,000 items needed to fill the entire demand.
Most processing in electronic components do not fit limited quantity business models, so parts that are good, are those where real companies with real engineering and QC departments can justify the 10s of millions of dollars needed to introduce a new product. You will notice that the high end tweaker market is full of those on the periphery, making snake oil wire or anti-vibration cones or other easy to make items that require no research, production sophistication or anyone but a salesman to design it. Everything of consequence in the actual circuit is mass produced high quality cheap parts that are also used in $50 stereos. So that periphery market for really expensive magic dust parts will get narrower and narrower in the types of items a small business can produce. The same goes for the vintage amp market, magic dust will be applied to a narrower and narrower range of products that don't require serious production chops and bankrolls.
They all complain about opamps or other semiconductors for example but their only answer is offering cables, AC line conditioners or hand wound transformers....none would even attempt to develop a better opamp. Mainly because they already know that current components are pretty darn good, there are excellent $0.45 ICs and even the most expensive are less than $5. Commercial grade mass opamps are surprisingly good, and are $0.08 for 2 channels. Major companies are happy to get $0.01 per chip net but tweaker magic dust salesmen are only happy with $1000.00 unit profit. There is 20 times the technology in the cheapest phone handset than the most esoteric stereo system for $50,000.

[J M Fahey]

Mainly because they already know that current components are pretty darn good,

That's the point.
When somebody asks me what to use I always say: "whatever is the market leader and sells by the millions"
TL072, generic caps, both plastic and electrolytics, even ceramics, regular carbon film resistors, TIP142/147, IRFPxxxx, copper wire (cheap PVC insulation), Lead-tin solder, EI silicon steel, ferrite magnets, Nomex, Epoxy, etc. are **incredibly** good and inexpensive.
I am in designer's heaven!!!
Parts do NOT limit me, so I must focus 100% on actual *design*, how to use them, what the best combination is.
People who say "for my design to sound better I need better/(more expensive) parts" is cheating or hiding behind a smoke screen.

Won't talk about tubes or tube quality because there yes, quality is abismal, tolerance and parameters are all over the map, and quality control is nonexistent, so money *may* buy better.

But on standard parts, *and* semiconductors?
They are all good and consistent.

[mort]

The other day I was picking up some tubes from a local supplier with a ~4 million tube inventory and he was saying that Svetlana/Winged C was supposed to be getting its name rights back in the US through court, and had already gotten it back in Europe. Now I'm hearing that they are just stopping production altogether? Looks like I'm receiving conflicting information.

This the guy I'm currently buying from: Orlando Vacuum Tubes

Are these the real McCoy's?

[Justin Thomas]

Mort,

Km6xz is in St. Petersburg, so I'll take his word for it concerning SED shutting down tube production... Regarding your tubes, those are the real Svets, made in the original factory. The =C= etching is the giveaway. If they were the New Sensor/Reflektor factory Svetlana-branded ones they'd be marked with the big "S" logo. The date code also gives it away - 2010? After they had lost their rights. I'm going to miss these tubes, though I've been pretty happy with the JJs I've been getting lately.

I'm gonna check out your vendor, too. Must be nice to live so close!

Justin

[mort]

I'm gonna check out your vendor, too. Must be nice to live so close!

Justin

For anyone that uses oddball tubes, he's got a dollar list where all tubes are a dollar. I've never even heard of any of them

His warehouse looks like about 7000 or 8000 sq ft, with 15 foot high shelves, all filled and stacked from floor to ceiling, wall to wall. The pile of boxes of (used/random) tubes to sort through was as big as my bedroom.

[soundmasterg]

The other day I was picking up some tubes from a local supplier with a ~4 million tube inventory and he was saying that Svetlana/Winged C was supposed to be getting its name rights back in the US through court, and had already gotten it back in Europe. Now I'm hearing that they are just stopping production altogether? Looks like I'm receiving conflicting information.

Mort, they only lost the rights to use the Svetlana name in the US and Canada in the early 2000's....they never lost those rights for the rest of the world. It was all down to poor business decisions as Km6xz alluded to above. That factory just doesn't have much in the way of business acumen it seems....

Greg

[Justin Thomas]

slightly off topic...

There's a guy in the town I used to live in who was the first radio broadcaster in the town - still had the original tube in his garage. Four-car garage with 15' ceilings, nothing but shelves full of tubes. Around the edges, tube microwaves, TVs, radar, whatever... I wanna be at that guy's estate sale! Not that I wish him ill, I brought him ~100 tubes to test, asked him to let me know how much it would cost before he started. He calls me two days later & says, "done, $12 please!" I about crapped my pants cuz he still charged 1950s prices. But he wouldn't sell me any tubes, only if I had to get him to fix my amps, and then the tube would be free with the repair.

Justin

[bnwitt]

That low life at EH is partly responsible for this. Svetlana let's their trademark lapse in the US and he swoops in and steals it. How can anyone not despise a business model that sells fake sub quality tubes under old respectable names. In my opinion we are losing the only decent tubes out there.