A great opportunity for someone !

[selloutrr]

Have you seen Gold Rush? "the glory hole!". Starting a tube company wouldn't be far off. Lots of work stress and little results but if you could and in time with the right crew and knowledge it is possible. Whoever you would need a television show to keep food on the table and build a fan base.

[steve_p]

Have you seen Gold Rush? "the glory hole!". Starting a tube company wouldn't be far off. Lots of work stress and little results but if you could and in time with the right crew and knowledge it is possible. Whoever you would need a television show to keep food on the table and build a fan base.

That guy is crazy!! i am amazed that they survived at all. I haven't seen any of season 2 yet though.

[LeftyStrat]

You have to make a quality product to survive.

Actually, we're all romanticizing the days when quality mattered. In the Walmart Generation, I think you just have to make a cheaper product to be successful.

If you're a radio station, you play what is going to be statistically best for ad revenue.

In software, time to market is more important than the number of bugs.

If you're a manufacturer of anything from shoes to computers, as long as the factory workers committing suicide over horrible working conditions doesn't show up in mainstream press, it's okay.

Venture Capitalists are not interested in anything that doesn't "scale." Meaning if increasing production by 100 percent requires hiring twice as many people, you should just forget it.

If civilization ever collapses and my family is in need of food, I hear MBA's and Wall Street types have been properly fattened and are quite tasty.

[selloutrr]

Yes to a point.

Though that is china's business plan and for the most part it's not a good one. People that still use tubes want a quality tube. In the days of everything being powered by tubes yes it's about profit over quality.

The market now is so small it's not going to support a half ass build.

It's been proven time and time again with botique amp companies. If it's not special it doesn't last and at best never really becomes anything worth owning.

If it's not something you can do to the best of it's abilities out source it and be happy with whatever tone you get.

[LeftyStrat]

People that still use tubes want a quality tube.

From a statistical standpoint, there are probably 99 buyers of tubes that don't have a clue other than what magazines tell them, and only 1 percent that really know what they're looking for.

Crate has sold more amps than Dumble, Fischer, or Fuchs (sorry no dis Andy).

My point being that there is a lot more money to be made selling to the ignorant masses than the informed few.

So from an MBA's point of view, or that of a venture capitalist, there is no "real" money to be made.

However, I still believe the small businessman can carve out a niche in the long tail of the market where the big boys don't find it profitable to go after.

[Structo]

I don't see the company surviving by selling $200 matched pairs of tubes. It has to be competitive to survive ideally supplying eom tubes for manufactures.

The business would need to be located somewhere with low enviromental standards and no income tax. As well as where ever offered the lowest amount of taxes fees and licenses.

I honestly don't see anything less then 3 million to get this started even owning the building. it's going to be all the little things that add up fast and being able to operate for at least 4 years without profit as it builds a name and fine tunes the product. At least $200,000 in just advertising per year.

Paul Allen can't touch something this dirty being a northwestern it's all about green and mother earth.

Do any of you remember the Tech Tube venture at Blackburn?
They tried to make a revolutionary new preamp tube but just couldn't get the bugs worked out and finally gave up.
I have no idea why they didn't or couldn't resolve the issues and of course I am not privy to any of the budget problems or financing that may have run out before they got the tube design stable.

But, they were a CRT factory and so making a small envelope tube with tiny structure inside was not right up their ally.

Apparently they went out of business due to the lack of demand for their cathode ray tube cathodes.

[img:640:480]https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-OZP3 ... chtube.jpg[/img]

Here with the GE equipment, you have all the machines.
You would have to source the special type of wire they used for one thing.
I also bet they outsourced some of the work such as the plate structure or the cathodes.
So all that equipment may be just for assembling the components into the glass, which also is not made on site.

Now they show a shelf with glass stock on it but who knows if that comes with the machine.

[img:388:289]https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-K7nv ... /Glass.JPG[/img]

They show a grid winding machine with trays so they make that but what about the frame work that supports the grid winding?
So whether or not that is all the machines you would need to make tubes is the question and it probably isn't.

[img:382:261]https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-t3_l ... achine.JPG[/img]

Hey, Lefty
Why don't you shoot Paul an email and tell him about this once in a lifetime thing and how many guitarists he would make happy not to mention the audiophiles that would like a low noise/ stable/ reliable vacuum tube.

[VacuumVoodoo]

Ask yourselves why none of the currently operational tube manufacturers expressed any interest in purchasing this equipment. Or perhaps they already picked the raisins and what is offered up for auction are unusable left overs?

[joCCe]

Do any of you remember the Tech Tube venture at Blackburn?
They tried to make a revolutionary new preamp tube but just couldn't get the bugs worked out and finally gave up.
I have no idea why they didn't or couldn't resolve the issues and of course I am not privy to any of the budget problems or financing that may have run out before they got the tube design stable.

But, they were a CRT factory and so making a small envelope tube with tiny structure inside was not right up their ally.

Apparently they went out of business due to the lack of demand for their cathode ray tube cathodes.

[img:640:480]https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-OZP3 ... chtube.jpg[/img]

Yeah, too bad they didn't resolve the issues they had.

I bought a couple of those tubes and I really liked them. They were microphonic, but I got around it by using a silicone tube around the tube.

Joakim