The info below was pulled from the Oct. 2, 2004 Archives of this list.
Here is a 10 year later update to this:
1) Amperex/Covimag plant in France has ceased making tubes, including
glass 4-400, 3-500 types.
2) CPI/Eimac has shut down San Carlos and relocated to the Palo Alto
plant with klystrons and IOTs. They reduced their in-house engineering
and application support for grid tubes to minimal technical content,
mostly sales. There are no new tube types being developed unless it is
to support their microwave devices business.
3) Thales does not produce glass tubes.
4) Most if not all glass transmitting tubes are from China now.
What a difference a decade made....
Happy Holidays,
John
K5PRO
The Amperex glass tubes sold by Richardson Electronics are made by Covimag in
France. For example, their 3-500 and 4-400 sized tubes.While it does seem that
REL
has their fingers in a lot of vacuum tube manufacturers, there are still
independent companies out there. You can still buy direct from CPI/Eimac and get
>engineering support - but not glass tubes anymore. Telefunken and
Seimens planar tubes are owned by Thales now, and Brown Boveri is also.
Thales does produce glass tubes,
in the Thonon les Bains facility. I have seen them there numerous times,
although they don't have a line of amateur power tubes anymore, mostly
industrial/scientific and broadcast.
> They took on the klystron business of Philips too. E2V in UK still
produces glass tubes, although again not amateur. If you are so
inclinded to buy out tube manufacturing equipment,
> why not go to Triton in Easton, PA and resolve what happened to the
Eimac 3-500Z and other originals.
73
John
K5PRO
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 2004 13:18:03 -0400
From: craxd <craxd1@ezwv.com>
Subject: Re: [Amps] 3-500Z Recomendations
To: "amps@contesting.com" <amps@contesting.com>
Message-ID: <415EE2CB.8050207@ezwv.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
I,m gonna go out on a limb here but here goes. Richardson Electronics
pulls the strings on the Eimac tubes now. They also own the brand names
Cetron and Amperex. They private label for everyone else too. When you
get a tube from either, you don't know where it's made at! Knowing how
Richardson does business, they're all probably from one manufacturer in
China. I know of one Chinese manufacturer now selling direct here in the
US who told me they were private labeling the 3-500Z and would not tell
me to whom! My guess was RF Parts or Richardson. I do know most
everything you'll get under Cetron is either Russian or Chinese. Now, I
hate to be hard on Richardson but I know for a fact who they are and how
they operate. I used to buy 1000's of tubes through their "shady" branch
years ago from a salesman named Bernie Guss. Bernie, told me everything
that was going on and who was who in both the legal and illegal
business. Richardson is the very reason you can not now buy a new
receiving tube of any type hardly as they were who bought out the GE
plant down in Owensburogh Kentucky. Myself and two others offered to buy
out the tube machinery lines for two models of tubes and Richardson flat
out refused to sell them. I asked the manager what would then happen to
the equipment. He said," It'll be put up in mothballs with dust settling
on it", if I recall correctly. This was done purely to raise the price
on receiving tubes and the price doubled shortly after that. The GE
plant is now named MPD and Richardson is the proud owner.
What burns me about this, it's nothing but a monopoly, and the US
government is letting them by with it! Just to put it bluntly, any name
branded tube in the US, Richardson controls the pricing on. I cant say
that Merit (RF Parts) buys from them but the tubes in big quantities has
to come from somewhere. The only glass tube manufacturers that are left
are in either Russia (Svetlana, Telsa), Yugoslavia (Phillips-EI) and
China, with China being the prodomanent one. Chinas prodomanence is due
to one thing, price!
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