Western Electric Acquires Ei!

[mrdon]

Does this mean we are going to pay through the roof for those Ei 12ax7's now?

[jac]

Yes, but does this mean MAYBE we'll also get an even better tube?

[rectifier]

Ei's have always sounded the best to me for new production EL84's. It will be very interesting to see what happens, maybe quality control will improve?

[gotdabluz]

I prefer the JJ's for consistency and reliability in a new produciton EL84 tube and for general purpose use such as in a guitar amp.

I have found the Ei's to be hit or miss as far as reliability goes, even though they do have really nice tone - especially for cleans. I like the Ei Elite Gold EL84 - not because of the gold pins, but because they were usually a cut above the rest of the line as far as quality control is concerned.

My hope is that Western's acquisition will mean an improvement in quality control and reliability and we will see the Ei rise to be a truly top notch product.

[mrdon]

Ei's have always sounded the best to me for new production EL84's. It will be very interesting to see what happens, maybe quality control will improve?

Quality control...man tell me about it. I really like Ei EL84's and I own an older quad but consider one the most recent batches of Ei EL84 's...the plates were uncoated. They were the ones marketed as "silver plates." Good grief! You couldn't drive them above 300V (which most amps do to EL84's) as their lifetime was shortened dramatically.

[zaphod_phil]

Yes, that was an infamous batch which came out a couple of years ago, where Ei had forgotten to coat their anodes! They would red-plate almost as soon as you looked at them. I'm suprised that you managed to buy a set more recently, as I would have thought they were all gone by now.

Hopefully the QA will improve. IIRC the tubes themselves are manufactured on a line set up by Telefunken, so their EL84s should have some of the NOS Telefunken vibe. What is also good about this acquisition is that it secures the future of Ei's tube factory, as there was a possibility it was going to have to shut down. We need every tube factory there is!

[Trout]

There is and has been a lot of speculation on other forums recently about what is " Actually" happening there.

Following a few of them, The Western Electric site only has a very vague announcement. The Same day that went up, The Price list disappeared.

There is some debate about WE's "acquisition". Look here.

http://www.audioasylum.com/audio/tubes/ ... 89259.html

And Here

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthre ... genumber=1

It should be interesting if this happens, But, Based on the previous price structure of WE products, A quad of new WE EL84's would cost more than building an 18W amp.

One thing that has always puzzled me about the current WE tubes being built on the original WE machines with original materials as claimed.

Richardson's plant is 3 miles up the road from me, And they have original WE tube manufacturing equipment onsite.

http://www.rell.com/
Richardson had, or maybe still has a video on their website of the 300B WE being made right here in Illinois.
I had a link to the video, but its on my other crashed PC.
They do indeed make and re-work transmitter tubes as well as others, But information is vague there also.
Cetron is owned by Richardson, And they have a huge tube warehouse about 11 miles from the Main building.

Local lore is that when the exodus to solid state occurring, Richardson purchased as many tube manufacturing setups they could locate.

Trout

[Spankenstrat]

Here's a picture of a Sovtek in production.

[rectifier]

Here's a picture of a Sovtek in production.

No wonder stock Valve Jr.'s sound like crap!

[Trout]

Here's a picture of a Sovtek in production.

[novemberrain]

Even though I'm negative by nature I'll take this as good news. I'd prefer fifty buck tubes that sound great and last to fifteen buck tubes that suck right outta the box!

[bigsbybender]

I'll take this as good news....Remember Tubes are the cheapest they've ever been, in general..

Look at a price list from 1955 for a 300B and adjust for inflation, it's about right on target. These were never cheap tubes.

I have a 1963 RCA 7025 with a price tag on the box it for ~$12us...now adjust that for inflation...buying it NOS today is still cheaper. McDonalds had burgers for 10 cents back then.

And as far as Quality is concerned, I bought an old tube display that dates to about 1969 from a hardware store that closed up shop....The display says: "2 in 8 Cases of tubes are bad...test your new ones" So even the "hallowed" tube makers put out alot of unusable junk. Now that tubes are specialized, and mostly for audio we have people that weed these things out that didn't back then. I'm guessing Ei didn't have a marketing or distributing department that did this properly. I've never bought a dead JJ and very few short lived Sovteks.....but Ei was another story.

j.

[pylet2000]

I take this as great news. Ei has been on the forefront of useable new production tubes in the terms of tone, in my book at least. They really do sound pretty close to the smooth plate Telefunkens they are patterned after. I have two T-funk ECC83 that sound nearly identical with the signature linear tone, and the gold pin Ei comes really close to that sound. The only downer is that the T-funks aren't as good for guitar amps as are, say, Mullards or Bugle Boys. But in this day and age we'll take what we can get. Little bright and crisp, but certainly not disproportionate, and even the Ei versions carry a good amount of bandwidth with a clean soundstage (when you get a good one that isn't noisy). I think the T-funks and subsequently the Ei are great for bringing out some detail in otherwise dull sounding amps. Having consistent and reliable ones will be a great asset to the amp community.

I do have to wonder, though, why did Western electric buy Ei? It seems that the business model would be pretty small beans, not tons of money floating around in tubes nowadays. I wonder if they aren't planning on retooling for a cheap source for the 300B? In any case, I bet these tubes end up improving, to everyone's advantage. And if they can improve a well respected 12AX7 along the way, right on.