NOStimate

[Ruud Broens]

How many around, still,
US 10 million
EU 3 million
....

just a get started estimate
R.

[Peter Wieck]

Ruud Broens wrote:

???

[Peter Wieck]

Ruud Broens wrote:
> How many around, still,
> US 10 million
> EU 3 million
> ...
>
> just a get started estimate
> R.

If you mean tubes... I would suggest that your US number be multiplied
by a factor of at least 200. Writing for myself, I have perhaps 2,000.
And my stock is absolutely nothing as compared to a couple of friends
with near six-figures in stored tubes. And a friend in upper New York
state with a 5-bedroom house floor-to-ceiling sorted and inventoried.

Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA

[Peter Wieck]

Ruud Broens wrote:
> How many around, still,
> US 10 million
> EU 3 million
> ...
>
> just a get started estimate
> R.

The more I think on it, the more I expect the estimate for NOS tubes
should be in the billions vs. millions.

Consider: In the United States alone, over 300,000,000 tube radios
(JUST radios) were manufactured between ~1923 and 1963. At an average
of 5 tubes per radio, that would be 1.5 billion for just for radios.
Now count in the vast numbers of televisions, telephone repeaters,
theatre amps, military gear, guidance systems, early controls,
elevators, radio transmitters, audio stuff, on and on and on. There was
a TV repair shop in every town, and the corner drug store sold tubes.
The military purchased many millions of tubes as spares, a chunk of
which remain in US military spares and are occasionally auctioned off.
But the bottom line is that tube manufacturing was likely in the
trillions overall.

Anecdotal evidence based on recent events: An auction in France about
two years ago "liberated" some tens of thousands of NOS tubes, crated
as delivered. That is just France, a country not much bigger than New
York State. The guy upstate: Assume his house is 2000 square feet, and
the tubes are stored only 4 feet high (higher), and that 30% of the
area is used for circulation (it isn't). Assume each tube box is 4" by
2" by 2" (Way big, but to allow for boxes and other packing). 2000 x 12
x 12 x 48 x 0.7 = 9,676,800 cubic inches. Divide that by 16. That is
604,800 by a VERY conservative estimate. One place. One guy. And that
is inventoried new-old-stock stuff.

And that is just scratching the surface.

Use the 1L6 as an example, an expensive tube mostly for Zenith
Transoceanic radios. It runs $30 +/- NOS. I have 8 spares, NOS. Just
me. Now, the WD11 tube. I had six of them, I gave them to friends with
radios that needed them, as I had no use for them. But they were also
new, in their boxes from Sylvania. 00, 01A, 71A and so forth, I have
quite a number of each. And those are purportedly rare tubes. Back to
the 1L6, Zenith made something over half-a-million radios calling for
them, add the
RCA/Halli/Stromber-Carlson/Airline/Silvertone/Capehart/FADA clones and
the associated spares, what the military purchased for their use... the
1L6 cannot possibly be a rare tube. It's like diamonds... an entirely
artificial market.

I expect that if every cache and hoard were opened, all but a very few
proprietary/specialty tubes would be discovered in their uncounted
thousands and prices would drop through the floor.

Source for Radio Count: Grinder's Guide.

Peter Wieck
Wyncote, PA

[Sander deWaal]

"Peter Wieck" > said:

>
>Ruud Broens wrote:
>> How many around, still,
>> US 10 million
>> EU 3 million


You meant to say billions, for sure.


>If you mean tubes... I would suggest that your US number be multiplied
>by a factor of at least 200. Writing for myself, I have perhaps 2,000.
>And my stock is absolutely nothing as compared to a couple of friends
>with near six-figures in stored tubes. And a friend in upper New York
>state with a 5-bedroom house floor-to-ceiling sorted and inventoried.



I read somewhere that a US division in peace time needed 3 times the
spare tube amount in their gear, when on alert, it would be 6 times,
and when in a war situation, even that number would be multiplied.

That would mean that for say the period of the Korea war alone,
billions of tubes were made, and probably many were never used.


The Dutch writer Menno van der Veen advocates the use of "normal" ,
universally accepted and used tubes like EL34, ECCXX etc.
He argues that new production of *those* will never cease, whereas the
new production of "fashion type" tubes may be stopped at any moment,
leaving the user no option than to pay through the nose for NOS or
even NNS tubes, ot to convert to more mainstream types.

A small example of this is in my 2A3 PP amp, where I made use of
Chinese 2A3s that sound good, but are equipped with an octal base.
Those are nowhere to be found these days, so when they're aging, I'll
have to replace the sockets for UX4.

However, I don't use this amp very much at this moment, so their life
may be long.

--
"Due knot trussed yore spell chequer two fined awl miss steaks."