Losing Focus: A First-World Problem.

Hi All,
I thought I’d share my (questionable) behaviour over the past week or so.

First, some brief background: I have a four year-old kit built Bob Latino VTA -70. It’s running the Latino-supplied unlabelled valves (Shuguang I think) save for a Mullard GZ33 rectifier. It sounds great. I’m completely happy with it. I have a spare set of JJ EL34s and a triple of NOS spare valves for the VTA board, all of which I’ve yet to fit.

So last weekend, the full realisation of the effect of the war in Ukraine coupled with the recent closure of one of the Chinese valve factories might have on future valve availability hit home. I know I know, some might justifiably argue that this realisation was late in coming, but anyway… First thing I did was buy another NOS GZ33. It arrived in it’s original box, late 60s or thereabouts, and had its original selling price printed on one end: fifteen shillings. That’s 75p in UK language and one dollar US. I paid £85 for it. I don’t have a problem with that; Bob says it’s the best rectifier for the STA 70s and 120s -which is good enough for me - it’s meant to be very reliable and it’s pretty to look at.

So I thought I'd better get hold of another set of EL34s 'just in case'. I spent hours and hours online, wondering whether to pay vast sums for matched quad NOS or go for re-issued Genelex KT77s, or Harma Retros or Groove Tubes or PS Vanes in those silly presentation boxes, drooling at the thought of Kevin's Stash at Upscale Audio and oh - what about cryo? - my finger hovering nervously over the 'Buy It Now' for two NOS Mullard EL34 XF2 with the two halo getters for £600, wondering why Hot Rox of Nottingham's valves are so inexpensive, reading absolutely dozens of reviews full of subjective terms and - I kid you not - at one point considering whether I should blow a grand or so on a valve tester!

Deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole I went. On Wednesday I dreamt that I'd gone back in time to the Mullard Factory in Blackburn and had the chance to grab a thousand EL34s and bring them back to 2022. I became so glued to my computer or phone that my family began to suspect I was on the Dark Web, messing about with Crypto or on porn sites. I put together a wish list from Watford Valves that came to £2100. Plus VAT at 20%.

And then yesterday I came to. I'd spent all this time buggering about on the Internet. The amp had been off all week - I hadn't listened to a bloody thing. So I deleted the 60+ open tabs on my Phone's browser, did the same on my computer, shut the pair of them down and went and turned my amp on to enjoy a hour of great sounding music WITHOUT getting out the meter to check valve bias for the umpteenth time.

Valves will never die. We have guitarists to thank for that. I'm just going to wait and hope that someone in the West will invest in a state-of-the art valve manufacturing facility that will make them like we used to.

Happy listening to all of you!

shhhh . . .  don't tell anyone, but when the world went to SH** with the russian war, I bought up about $5000 worth of tubes.
I'll sell them at the going rate, which is to say, check the price at TubeDepot, where it says "out of stock".
So that's $78 per tube or $312 for a quad of Sovtek 6550WE (standard fare in our ST120 amps).  Tungsol EL34B at $48 each or $192 quad.
now on the website at link below
Roy     www.tubes4hifi.com/tubes.htm

Buy a $50 variac...Turn the house voltage down. Bias the tubes a little lower....Run them for years and years......No big deal....

In general, I believe political discussions have no place on an audio forum. But here, they're practically inevitable. When the vast majority of newly manufactured tubes come from countries whose governments are behaving badly in the world, we all have to decide for ourselves what the right thing to do is.