1) The vacuum tubes that china (and sovtek) have resurrected are all
power triodes. These are to fuel the desire in the music industry for
tube amps (both for reproduction and for creation of music). It has long
been known in the guitar industry that tube amps give a "warmer" sound
that "fuzzes" as it overdrives (think hendrix) vs solid state amps which
make nasty distortion when they overdrive (think
metallica/megadeth/etc).. I assume that solid state amps have probably
gotten so good that it's impossible to tell the difference anymore (or
not? I don't know) but this is how it was in the 80's & 90's, and such a
thing is built into the conscience of the music industry and especially
guitarists. I've noticed that musicians will pay more for just about any
piece of equipment that any other consumer on the face of the planet. If
you can target your gadget at musicians, they will pay 10x the price
everyone else will, because they're always looking to get "that sound"
that will set them apart from everyone else. I've built quite a few
midibox SID's for friends that are musicians (because they cannot be
sold according to the license agreement) but the much more inferior
SIDStation's from the 80's routinely sell for thousands of dollars. The
midibox contains like $50 worth of parts.. depending on how easily you
can find broken Commodore 64's. Musicians are crazy... So, anyways,
where I am going with this is that just because China & Russia are
making power triodes for amplifiers doesn't mean that there is a market
for other tube types. I don't see them making any color TV sweep tubes
for my tube transceiver, for example... or any other power pentodes for
that matter. I assume that nixies are a much more niche market than
power amplifiers, the two are apples and oranges.
2) What happened to all of the soviet equipment for making nixies? if I
had to guess? It probably has been sold as scrap. In 2003, the Minister
of the Russian Federation for Atomic Energy reported that Radioactive
Thermoelectric Generators were being taken to pieces for scrap by scrap
thieves... If people will tear apart an RTG for scrap, I guarantee they
will tear apart an old nixie factory for scrap too.
-Adam
On 7/7/2011 1:34 PM, James wrote:
China has resurrected production of a surprising number of vintage
vacuum tubes. I think a large Nixie tube could be produced at a
similar price point and demand as some of the popular audio output
tubes. I wonder what has happened to the Soviet equipment that was
used to produce nixies up into the 80s?
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