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Post by samuelpepys on Jul 31, 2024 15:31:22 GMT -6
Hi! I've got some v76's and v72's, and some old, valuable German tube mics I use on a day to day basis. However, my v72's have both broken down and needs to be rebuilt/repaired. And I'm thinking, what happens to my old tube pre's and microphones when those tubes inevitably runs out internationally? Will I have dead, useless mics and pre's that I suddenly can't sell because they can't be used anymore? And we're not far off them running out considering their ever increasing difficulty to find and soaring price.
I'm just imagining some guy having spent 30k for a nice u47, and two years later, his tube breaks down, and the only two tubes for sale world wide costs 130k each, with no guarantee they will work... This scenario will happen to someone at some point in the relatively near future. What do we do then? Do we install new drop in replacement parts that makes the mic technically work but also sound like any other generic 1-2k mic, or do we put them on the shelf or donate them to museums?
I'm just wondering wether or not I should sell and instead invest in slightly newer solid state pre's and hope the parts can be replaced more easily in the future than magical unobtanium tubes that we can't build anymore because literally no one on earth knows how.
I know I'm a bit doomy and gloomy about this, but let's face it, there's no escaping the inevitability of our tubes running out with how rare they are already becoming. This, coupled with how we can't seem to make transformers the way they used to, makes me question how much longer our gear will actually be expensive or a good investment to have in our studios.
What are your thoughts?
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Post by doubledog on Jul 31, 2024 15:36:26 GMT -6
this is why people hoard/stockpile tubes. Grab some spares. Maybe even enough to last your lifetime? Or sell and end the worry.  most every tube I own (in gear) can easily be replaced so I'm not worried at the moment. |
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Post by samuelpepys on Jul 31, 2024 15:45:18 GMT -6
this is why people hoard/stockpile tubes. Grab some spares. Maybe even enough to last your lifetime? Or sell and end the worry. most every tube I own (in gear) can easily be replaced so I'm not worried at the moment. I've grabbed som spares for my old Gates Sta-Level, even though they are becoming a bit expensive, but there's no way I can realistically buy spares for my other gear that won't bankrupt me with the prices we are seeing now. And the price will only go up, precicely because people are hoarding. Elite level tube gear that uses the expensive tubes could soon become even too expensive for big studios to maintain, and it worries me how we might lose the sound, without having a viable alternative that sounds as good.
I mean, there's hope that one excentric billionaire spends 3-5b dollars researching for decades and eventually developing tubes like they used to that can be mass produced, but let's not bet on that happening, unless one of us becomes a billionaire.
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Post by russellcreekps on Jul 31, 2024 17:13:49 GMT -6
this is why people hoard/stockpile tubes. Grab some spares. Maybe even enough to last your lifetime? Or sell and end the worry. most every tube I own (in gear) can easily be replaced so I'm not worried at the moment. So per tube, how many would you think for 40 years? |
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Post by wiz on Jul 31, 2024 17:34:40 GMT -6
I wouldn't say I was scared of this problem.. but it was a factor when I decided to downsize my gear... essentially getting rid of my hardware....and is a factor when considering microphone purchases.....I only have one piece of gear left that has tubes in it (including guitar amps) and that is the BN67 mic from beesneez.
I even sold off my V72 preamp. Kind of getting out while the goings good thing.
I always loathed that mics would change their sound when you changed tubes.... others seem to love it.
cheers
Wiz
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Post by russellcreekps on Jul 31, 2024 17:40:30 GMT -6
Like how soon do you think we’ll run out? It’ll be at least a few decades right, but I’m sure the prices will keep going through the roof until then
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Post by copperx on Jul 31, 2024 17:58:00 GMT -6
Like how soon do you think we’ll run out? It’ll be at least a few decades right, but I’m sure the prices will keep going through the roof until then
Fairchild clone owners:
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Post by bossanova on Jul 31, 2024 18:02:37 GMT -6
Hi! I've got some v76's and v72's, and some old, valuable German tube mics I use on a day to day basis. However, my v72's have both broken down and needs to be rebuilt/repaired. And I'm thinking, what happens to my old tube pre's and microphones when those tubes inevitably runs out internationally? Will I have dead, useless mics and pre's that I suddenly can't sell because they can't be used anymore? And we're not far off them running out considering their ever increasing difficulty to find and soaring price.
I'm just imagining some guy having spent 30k for a nice u47, and two years later, his tube breaks down, and the only two tubes for sale world wide costs 130k each, with no guarantee they will work... This scenario will happen to someone at some point in the relatively near future. What do we do then? Do we install new drop in replacement parts that makes the mic technically work but also sound like any other generic 1-2k mic, or do we put them on the shelf or donate them to museums?
I'm just wondering wether or not I should sell and instead invest in slightly newer solid state pre's and hope the parts can be replaced more easily in the future than magical unobtanium tubes that we can't build anymore because literally no one on earth knows how.
I know I'm a bit doomy and gloomy about this, but let's face it, there's no escaping the inevitability of our tubes running out with how rare they are already becoming. This, coupled with how we can't seem to make transformers the way they used to, makes me question how much longer our gear will actually be expensive or a good investment to have in our studios.
What are your thoughts?
In the bigger picture, nothing is permanent. Ways of life and techniques have been dying out for centuries. I've gone through some therapy around that seeing how some of the prized tech I enjoy from the 80s and 90s is slowly dying due to age with a finite supply of replacement parts, or is being preserved as fuzzy copies that don't quite reproduce the original. Every bit of accumulated, available knowledge and technology that we have is a gift, but it's one we only have temporarily. Society has figured out how to make it last longer. It still has an expiration date. I try to treasure what I still have while it's here, and accept that won't always be the case. (And buy more books and copies of physical media.) In the case of the gear, I try to keep in mind that it doesn't mean anything without the music/idea, and that will always shine through, especially to younger generations that don't have nostalgia for the sound of the past. |
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Post by samuelpepys on Jul 31, 2024 18:16:18 GMT -6
Like how soon do you think we’ll run out? It’ll be at least a few decades right, but I’m sure the prices will keep going through the roof until then As far as I've been able to grasp from gathering anecdotal data from forums, in 2017-2018, the general belief was that we were already starting to scrape the bottom of the barrel, with most "NOS tubes" not actually being NOS at all, and of generally much more sketchy quality than just 5 years earlier, and this seems to match with other posts I've seen from people who generally know what they are talking about. If you buy a NOS tube today from anything but a very reputable reseller (not many of those), you probably aren't going to get a NOS tube and will instead get a used tube, and it may or may not be any good at all. And if you buy one of the really pricey and rare tubes from most sellers online, it DEFINITELY won't be NOS or likely even good sounding even if they claim it is, but you still pay the big bucks. It seems most of the stock that once existed was thrown out from electronic stores if the anecdotes are correct (people saying their dads told them they threw out 200-300 NOS boxes of the now most sought after tubes because it was the late 80's and nobody cared about them anymore), with an unknown percentage of that stock being hoarded by a few individuals. So I would think that if you own a u47, m49 or something similar, you probably will be able to get tubes for it for a few more decades, but the tubes may end up costing 5k-10k each within this decade depending on how fast the stock depletes, which would basically make each tube as expensive as the microphones they are used for was 5 years ago, which is not a nice developement. Much speculation in what I've written here, but the general gist of it is hard to ignore as anything but a depressive fact. |
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Post by paulcheeba on Jul 31, 2024 18:28:37 GMT -6
I have big stocks to cover the character stuff and I’ll be dead before I have to worry.
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Post by chessparov on Jul 31, 2024 18:41:58 GMT -6
I'll try to snag a spare Brimar for my BU67 eventually. So I can sleep once more.   |
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Post by bossanova on Jul 31, 2024 18:53:25 GMT -6
A follow up to my post up above. I used to teach college lecture classes in music, particularly the surveys for a few music majors but usually non-majors.
There was one time during the History of Pop Music, where I played The Beatles for a class that had at least one 18-year-old who had never heard the Beatles before that he could recall. (This would have been some time between 2010 and 2015.)
So at the end of giving him what I assumed must have been the awe-inspiring revelation of hearing the Beatles, I asked him for his reactions and impressions to hearing these legends of popular music.
I shit you not, his response was, "It sounds OLD." This was not a laid-back or casual response. It was **OLD** with a healthy degree of distain that only a young person can muster. Mind you I was under 30 myself at the time and I was still appalled.
Anyway, all this tube gear that we think sounds so great just probably sounds **OLD** to the kids. It's the way time goes. Eventually we'll all be dead and the next generation won't know the difference anyway.
They'll have been raised on Beatles remixes. 😱
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Post by chessparov on Jul 31, 2024 19:01:46 GMT -6
The most important learning is... AFTER you know everything. |
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Post by russellcreekps on Jul 31, 2024 19:07:00 GMT -6
I'll try to snag a spare Brimar for my BU67 eventually. So I can sleep once more. Likewise! |
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Post by Bat Lanyard on Jul 31, 2024 20:02:29 GMT -6
I wouldn't worry about a full stop. Where there's a need, someone makes something to sell to that need.
Not saying it would be the same but for sure the tubes in the gear I like to use don't keep me up at night thinking about what-ifs.
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Post by ab101 on Jul 31, 2024 20:29:07 GMT -6
I wouldn't worry about a full stop. Where there's a need, someone makes something to sell to that need. Not saying it would be the same but for sure the tubes in the gear I like to use don't keep me up at night thinking about what-ifs. Yes. But having some spares is important. And they can be investments. |
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Post by EmRR on Jul 31, 2024 20:52:02 GMT -6
Don't buy gear that used expensive tubes, don't support manufacturers who keep making new gear using already scarce and expensive tubes.
There's plenty of inexpensive tubes that work just fine. Probably a whole other world of HOLY GRAIL if someone would bother to listen to them.
I got out of tube comps using 6386's about 15 years ago, it was already a bad scene then.. Plenty of $5 compression tubes. ETC ETC ETC
Plenty of substitute tubes that can be made to work if it really gets that bad. Change a socket, rewire, using something else in it. If it gets bad, that will become an acceptable alt. I've seen RCA preamps changed to EF86's sometime in the '60's, changed them back to the $7 orig tubes....sound more or less the same.....
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Post by Bat Lanyard on Jul 31, 2024 22:47:42 GMT -6
I wouldn't worry about a full stop. Where there's a need, someone makes something to sell to that need. Not saying it would be the same but for sure the tubes in the gear I like to use don't keep me up at night thinking about what-ifs. Yes. But having some spares is important. And they can be investments. For sure. I wasn't saying that's a bad idea. |
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Post by allmidi on Aug 1, 2024 6:49:21 GMT -6
Or sell and end the worry. The best advice. |
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Post by doubledog on Aug 1, 2024 8:06:40 GMT -6
this is why people hoard/stockpile tubes. Grab some spares. Maybe even enough to last your lifetime? Or sell and end the worry. most every tube I own (in gear) can easily be replaced so I'm not worried at the moment. So per tube, how many would you think for 40 years? that totally depends on the device they are installed in. My blues junior (tube guitar amp) gobbles up EL84's (but luckily they are available even though more expensive than a few years ago). I've got an LA-610 that is at least 10 years old I've never changed tubes and it still works great. newer compressors I have (LiN2A and 2A-KT) use tubes that are readily available (and the LiN2A even has an extra socket if you are one who hoarded vintage tubes) |
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Post by thehightenor on Aug 1, 2024 8:14:14 GMT -6
Like how soon do you think we’ll run out? It’ll be at least a few decades right, but I’m sure the prices will keep going through the roof until then Yeah, my ears will run out of fidelity before tubes run out. I'm 60. If you're 20, then yeah go with plugins .... no wait you already do that  |
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ericn
Temp
Balance Engineer
Posts: 16,083 
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Post by ericn on Aug 1, 2024 8:57:15 GMT -6
I wouldn't worry about a full stop. Where there's a need, someone makes something to sell to that need. Not saying it would be the same but for sure the tubes in the gear I like to use don't keep me up at night thinking about what-ifs. Except if the cost to fill that need is exorbitant, go ask any of the numerous guys who have looked at reintroducing a tube or 2, the initial investment is insane! Those who have looked into buying Old machinery have usually found useless rusting hulks. It can be done, but for the most part unless you have venture capital or oil money it’s a no go. |
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Post by russellcreekps on Aug 1, 2024 19:21:09 GMT -6
Like how soon do you think we’ll run out? It’ll be at least a few decades right, but I’m sure the prices will keep going through the roof until then Yeah, my ears will run out of fidelity before tubes run out. I'm 60. If you're 20, then yeah go with plugins .... no wait you already do that Back side of 40’s here! |
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Post by russellcreekps on Aug 1, 2024 19:28:55 GMT -6
So how long does tube typically last if it was good to begin with, and well kept? 15-20 years? And not in a big studio where the gear may be on all day every day…only turn on what I’m using.
I don’t have a lot of gear but most of it is tube. So to replace every tube, I’d need 20…so around $6000 bucks, damn!
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ericn
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Balance Engineer
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Post by ericn on Aug 1, 2024 21:47:07 GMT -6
So how long does tube typically last if it was good to begin with, and well kept? 15-20 years? And not in a big studio where the gear may be on all day every day…only turn on what I’m using. I don’t have a lot of gear but most of it is tube. So to replace every tube, I’d need 20…so around $6000 bucks, damn! Where’s Bowie for this one ? My hunch is you won’t like my answer & Im betting Bowie won’t give you one that you like either; it depends. The tube, how it’s used and where it’s sourced from are all factors here, yeah it sucks there are no easy answers, but once you realize it’s a pretty complex simple question you will understand the fun of vintage tubes. I will admit old broadcast gear ( think EMMR) will probably out last most modern tube gear because well if a tube failed you were off the air will out last modern designs because it’s just a recording session. |
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