At 01:29 AM 1/16/03 -0800, you wrote:
>Concerning why the Centaur was discontinued, several people emailed me to
>tell me that the reason was that Svetlana had discontinued their 811A tube
>and there was no equivalent that was as well-made on the market, so Ten-Tec
>discontinued the amp rather than offer it with substandard tubes.
>
>Svetlana still makes the 572B which is a drop-in replacement for the 811A.
>They are about 50% more expensive (about $150 for a set versus $100 for the
>811As). Why didn't Ten-Tec offer the Centaur either without tubes or with
>the 572Bs?
At the time the Centaur was discontinued, the gap in pricing was wider.
A set of three Svetlana 572B's was $180, three 811A's were $60.
The price increase in the Svetlana 811A's only occured after they
discontinued manufacturing them. Dropping in 572B's would have
required some safety changes to the amp as well - 572B's are fine
in the Centaur as long as you don't exceed the ratings of the power
supply. We would have had to make changes to the amp to ensure
that users of the amp couldn't burn it up using it "as is" with the
572's installed.
Combine the added cost of the 572's, engineering costs to change
the amp design, possibly (speculating) a material cost increase and
the fact that at $749 the Centaur was already more than $100 over
the Ameritron amp - we didn't have any choice.
We did fool around with a 572B version of the Centaur that was
higher power and would have been $1K+ back around the time
that the amp was originally released (1996). This amp never made
it past the engineering prototype stage and was not (and won't be)
offered as a Ten-Tec product.
Scott Robbins, W4PA
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