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In Reply to: RE: Do you really care about suggested components? posted by Ozzie on September 29, 2014 at 18:15:41
you're wrong on one account CJ actually supplies NOS Mullards (M8080) and NOS GE 6GK5 tubes on some of their products and still have a few in reserve. However if you expect manufacturers to spend more time running around buying bits and pieces here and there, well, you need a lesson in real life supply and demand: Its ok for individual users who on;y need a few, not so with manufacturers who need thousands
Still the primary issue as I see it is that Stereophile reviewers have no common consensus in taste....Makes th ratings really useless in mu opinion.
Follow Ups:
Conrad & Johnson, along with the other Johnson over at ARC & Spark, did their level best to NOT buy, NOT support American-made and FAR superior made & sounding tubes when the GE/MPD factory was still operating in Owensboro,KY; never mind Richardson's Cetron factory in the outskirts of Chicago. Only Cary did, by buying Cetron 300B's when they could.
The Frenchmen at Jadis did more to support the American tube manufacturing industry than ARC or c-j, commissioning a KT88 from Cetron back in the day. Not sure if McIntosh didn't use them in the first MC-275 reissues as well.
No, c-j & ARC supported Communism, preferring to save a few bucks in their $5000, $10,000 and more JUNK by buying Russian instead.
The only reason you are seeing any NOS from c-j is that they got great deals buying unwanted US Government surplus CRAP, just like Anthony Michaelson's Musical Fidelity does, and Peter Qvortrup's Audio Note. The 5965's in the PV-5 preamp along with its 5751's; another unwanted surplus tube back in the mid-80's. The 5965 is a computer tube!!!
Many of the Mullard "M" series premiums are shoddy junk, like the M8137/12AX7 & M8136/12AU7. Those with ears to hear will quickly notice that regular production Mullard AU's & AX's are FAR superior in both sound quality AND reliability! The M8080 is a glorified 6C4, which is just half of the nasty/mediocre M8136. It should have just the right amount of dull, lifeless, fuzzy & bland tube sound that is c-j's sonic signature. The 6GK5 is a crap TV tube that was used in the front-end tuner section usually as a VHF (video RF) amp. It may sound good, but both it & the M8080 are 7-pin weirdos that you'd only use because you got a few cases, REAL CHEAP.
And that, and EVERYTHING else about conrad-johnson is CHEAP!
The build quality, the PCB's, the connectors, the transformers, the paper-thin chassis, the rusty hardware....everything except a handful of Vishay resistors and a few no-namo teflon caps.
And of course, the laughable joke of their asking prices...
Both companies, along with David Manley's VTL, happily pissed in their own well for the pettiest of short-term & short-sighted gain, and now they can't buy decent-sounding tubes in any quantity NO MATTER WHAT.
And its an incredible, unforgivable crime!
All the more so, because neither can you or I!!!
Because even if you dragged all that beautiful & incredibly large & complex machinery out of storage (ha!), or the scrapyard(more likely, but still: ha!), or built from scratch to exact specifications all over again (a manned expedition to Pluto might be cheaper), you STILL would be f***ed because all the precious know-how & parts suppliers are gone,gone,GONE for good!
For this reason alone I'd boycott c-j & ARC!!!
That's why the average American (and Canadian!) sucker got boned into bailing out GM: Who cares about Garbage Machine, it's all the parts suppliers & subcontractors who also supplied EVERYONE ELSE. The loss of them, and the ENTIRE automotive sector would have been in a chaos of stand-still. Remember even Toyota & Honda were crying to the Governments to bail out GM? It might have seemed weird, but they all share suppliers (as all the recalls show!). Sure they'd like to kill GM. But slowly, and with THEIR song...
When CJ learned of the total cessation of GE 6550A's They bought out the entire stock of Richardson Electronics supply. Richardson had already spoken for and bought out 60,000 GE 6550A's, the entire last production run, and they claimed to have enough to last their normal sales for about 5 to 7 years.As a Dealer I would buy 20 or so at a time and always double check their inventory, which made the Richardson sales staff chuckle. Then one day I placed an order and I was told their entire inventory was bought out: some 58000+ GE 6550A's were gone and to just one buyer. They wouldn't identify the buyer, though.
Many years later I found out that CJ spent about $2 Mil to purchase the entire lot from Richardson, which then forced me to scramble frantically searching for smaller distributors who had some left. Not caring about NOS? Your statement is pure BS, if you knew the facts.
That flatly contradicts your statement. After all, any audio company in existence at the time could have done the same.
The M8080 that CJ has was purchased from surplus NATO stocks, already accepted by UK military. It is a 6C4 but utilized the famous, or infamous, I guess for you, box plate construction.
As for Manley: when stocks of 6550A's dried up, as well as the original KT88's they used initally, Dave went to Yugoslavia and commissioned the the KT90's. He needed something to withstand the 600 plate volts that he ran with his amps. GE's were marginal at 600 volts, KT 88's (original) went up to 800 volts but were simply unavailable and when found prices were becoming astronomical for a manufacturer. Don't even bother to mention the Chinese and Russian crap at the time. unless you like fireworks....
VTV magazine, in their review of the 12AX7's rated the box plates among the highest, and also published the comment that they were simply not available any more.
That you do not like the CJ sound is certainly evident. That NOS parts and tubes are essentially un obtainable is also very true and no current production company, unless very small, can stock enough parts to continue with any sizeable production runs using NOS parts.
Even George Wright when alive, would scour surplus bins for usable tubes. He would make limited runs using what he could find, but his production was very small and tube configuration would often change as the run continued
CJ caps were custom made polystyrene and made for them by Southern/F-Dyne, who also build for Mark Levison, and Krell (they were kind enough to build several thousand for me, BTW). The company is now owned by Electrocube and I noticed recently they are reviving the Souther/F-dyne name and custom caps.
When styrene went out of production since dioxin is a byproduct of manufacture (production has now switched to mainland China, of course), CJ switched to teflon, but teflon has actually a higher dielectric memory than teflon does. I do not who makes their teflon caps for them, however.
Quicksilver Audio at one time had 5000 GE 5AR4's. Tough, rugged, Mike would run a 300 uF cap after the rectifier tube and tubes would still last for years. He had a similar amount of Sylvanis 8417's. But when his stock ran out, he was forced to change tube choices and designs and had to work with what he could get. That's a fact of life.Get with the facts of the modern world. Old stock is basically gone unless you are a DIY type and need only a limited amount. Buying tens of 1000's and having to sit on them, is certainly not going to help your economic bottom line any.
Oh yeah, did you ever try the Cetron KT-88's? Richardson owns the rights to Cetron, you know.
LOL!
For only my customer base I have over 300 + GE 6550A's in stock. BTW, did you know that according J.C. Morrison, head tube designer for New Sensor for a decade, GE quit making 6550A's in 1986, and their 6550A's sold after were actually Yugos? It wasn't till end of 1989 that Owensborough started remanufactureing the 6550A's. ( don't argue with me, take it up with JC, I'm just repeating what he wrote). You can identify the Owensborough tubes because their grid rods are bronze beryllium, unlike the plain nickel grid rods of the earlier designs.
I have TT-21's, I have genuine Genelex KT-88's, 66's. and 77's. and much more, but they are only for my local based customers, period. So I know a little about NOS tubes and their build and sound.
Edits: 10/10/14 10/10/14
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