No More Russian Tubes

(From @schiit in the Head-Fi thread linked above):

Re-wiring the tube socket for the 5670 pinout? Reportedly still large stockpiles of those GE JAN ones around...

 

@Noodlz recently became a fan of 5670, might be time to pick others up for years to come. I imagine most tubes to be around 2-5 years each.

 

If so, would providing the 5670 with an adapter make more sense (to keep the Vali 2 design unchanged)? I use a GE 5670 with adapter on my Vali 2. The tube and adapter are not very tall. Maybe slightly taller than the stock 6BZ7.

Not sure if getting/manufacturing the adapter on large quantities would be easier than a making a running change to the board.

 

I actually started a thread "Support Ukraine, buy these NOS tubes" with some links to good deals on soviet stock. It got lost in one of those SBAF login error confusions... let me know if you'd like it redone. 6n3p (5670 equivalent) 6n23p and the like.

 

Time for @schiit to set up a new workshop.

I mean... A bit of metalwork; some glass-blowing... Can it be that hard?

 

From Jason’s head-fi post:
Start our own tube factory. Ahhhhhhh...no. That's, ah...kinda bonkers. And even if we did have a line on an old tube factory, complete with fixtures, that's not going to be a real solution in 3-6 months. Maybe 36 months. Maybe.

 

Yeah, I was speculating based on Jason's "minor tweak" - and thinking about it, changing the pinout would make less sense than minor changes to the circuit to accommodate another tube type with the same pinout but slightly different voltage/current requirements while allowing continued use of the tubes that work in it now. But I'm speculating again...

 

On one hand I'm glad I only have a toe dipped into the world of tubes. Any lean I had toward a future Valhalla/Lyr/Freya purchase is pretty much gone now, but not for anything Schiit has done or is doing. I have plenty to keep the Vali running forever, and I don't have a compelling need to tangle myself up in a tube-dependent item now.

I (truly) do feel bad for the serious tube rollers. Whatever crazy prices the unobtaniums were going for will be even crazier; three-fourths (or more) of the used/NOS market just fell off a cliff; whatever new stock that got out before the export ban just tripled in price (minimum); and what new manufacturing is left will end up with months-long backlogs. If you don't already love your tube setup, you have some rough (harmonic) seas ahead of you well into next year.

And finally, while I'll save the real vitriol for the other more appropriate thread on the topic, this is just another reminder that war sucks. Many of those jobs our little obsessions collectively sustain will go away and never come back.

 

You wouldn't think so, except the very presence of the NOS tube market contradicts that question. It took decades (half a century?) for the tube industry to reach its peak. Now, we lust over tubes with the different color plates, or the weirdly-shaped getters. Do those really make the actual difference in the sound quality? No, but it's the only way we can identify the differences between the ones that sound, "meh," and the ones that sound, "wow." The secrets behind the actual materials, processing and assembly methods, etc. have long been buried.

If it was only a bit of metalwork and glass-blowing, the Chinese would've cornered the market on tubes - or the Russians, for that matter. There was/is a lot more to it.

Just stating the obvious, and teeing off on your statement per se, knowing full well it's made in jest.

 

It looks like the future is Chinese tubes and diving deeper into what's available NOS.

Doesn't France have TV tubes that specific to their country that no one really uses for audio yet?

 

Is it still the case that these things are secret? Or just that it isn't really feasible for small-scale factories to give all their workers cancer from breathing in thoriated tungsten dust?

 

But... But...

I've seen it on YouTube!

 

We can make better tubes..

Although the quoted NASA scientist who developed them is now better known for... other things.

 

Faster is not necessarily "better" ... (at least for audio applications).

 

Lol, this sounds like the vinyl market.

 

So then there's this.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/11/tech/ukraine-neon-chips/index.html

Get your new DAC while you can...

 

That’s basically what the Korg nutube is

also the second link doesn’t seem to work

 

It was almost certainly meant to highlight that scientist got nailed for giving tech secrets to China.

 

This isn’t as big of an issue. Neon is distilled from the air and Ukraine doesn’t have a higher concentration than anywhere else. Ukrainian neon was so cheap though that there was no reason to distill it locally.