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[Amps] richardson? TSPA

To: amps@contesting.com
Subject: [Amps] richardson? TSPA
From: "John T. M. Lyles" <jtml@lanl.gov>
Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 22:19:29 -0600
List-post: <mailto:amps@contesting.com>
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!

Will Matney

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