EU to ban vacuum tubes from 1st January, 2019

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Ordinary incandescents have disappeared. All you can buy are (ahem) 'rough service' incandescents (which often lack the internal fuse which deals with arcs) and halogen incandescents (which often don't last very long). Soon, compact fluorescents will disappear too. A ban on valves is not something we should treat as a joke, as it is all too likely on the grounds of energy conservation.
 
richwalters said:
Wrong..here in Germany filament types are still available at most DIY stores.
Perhaps I should have said ordinary incandescents have disappeared in the UK. I was wrong to assume that other EU nations are equally diligent in implementing EU regulations. Or is this another example of the UK gold-plating EU rules?

Hardly worth anyone getting wound up.
You may mean 'not worth the politicians banning them'; I fear what could happen is 'good to be seen to do something, and not many people will drop their vote as a consequence'.
 
Not wishing to wander too far from the OP's April fool joke I think more thought should be given to the conservation of order. When I listen to my nice warm valve amp in the cold winter evening under the non flickering broad spectrum glow of my incandescent lamp watching the artificial coal effect supplied by another two red coated incandescent bulbs I'm only disturbed by the soft click of the thermostat turning itself off to compensate for my profligacy - bliss.

:spin:
 
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Ebay Global Shipping Program (GSP) already banned vacuum tubes from the service, completely. GSP is the export agent service that USA-based eBay sellers are strongly encuraged to use. Vacuum tubes are not listed in the "banned items" page yet, but they are sistematically seized and "disposed off" (so they write) by the GSP center as "hazardous items". eBay will refund the buyer and the transaction is removed from the buyer history, the item will be eventually resold domestically by a GSP partner company. This is not an april's fool joke, sadly. Just check any of the eBay support forums or tube-related vlogs (the Guitologist, etc). Last year I still got a few tubes, but on the second half of the year I lost 3 shipments from USA one after another and I stopped using the service. Unfortunately the USPS service costs are a lot higher, and most non-professional USA eBay sellers do not ship low value items abroad. Granted, a few specialized tubes have trace amounts of mercury, but most don't. JJ, as example, does have a EL34 RoHs certificate on the web site. I personally believe that the "hazardous item" GSP ban on vacuum tubes is more related to discuraging the use of the service for fragile items that have unfavorable volume/weight ratio. That's a pity because the service was workig fine (for me, at least).
 
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