Who can explain the source of this Siemens 12AU7

[Kenneth Zhu]

By change I got a pair of milliary coded Simense 12au7. Collecting tubes is one of my favorite hobby and I always endeavor to un-earth the real source of the collected tube as a pleasure. What suprises me is that this tube, coded as "1A1 G4B", with the "G" printed 90 degress from horizon.

I have checked the code list of the Philips Gourp, which shows that G stands for tubes made by Mullard Fleewood and after Feb 22, 1954, Loewe Opta, which seems to be a factory under Valvo.

But there no indication of such a horizontally placed "G".

Anybody knows the answer?

[Kenneth Zhu]

Where are they?! Help!!!!!

[kevinkr]

Try posting a better picture, that might help. Pretty obscure question, the people who definitively knew the answer to your question are probably long departed this mortal coil..

The other possibility is that they are recent knock offs by a clever tube counterfeiter. (Hopefully not though.) It has happened to me once, I bought some Amperex 12AU7A on ePay from someone in HK, markings and boxes absolutely perfect, tube though never saw the inside of an Amperex factory. I didn't pay a lot, but I still felt very cheated. They might have been recent Richard**n relabels, but they weren't billed as such in the auction.

You may already know more about tube collecting than a lot of people here.

[Kenneth Zhu]

I am always traveling in the most under-developed countries where tube audio is a long forgotten tale and new fever for such fatanstic machines are at the stage of incubation, 'cause modern tube machines won't cost small.

This pair of tubes costs me less than US20, 00 or each less than US 10.00. I bought them from a local shop with a 50-year history.

Sometimes I can buy ECC82 at US 1.00 each. They need not to counterfeit for US 1.00 unit price.

[Kenneth Zhu]

Yugoslovia Ei tube OEMed to Simense. The rippleless plate orginates from their facilities equipped by Telefulken. Now these facilities no longer exist. They have become debris for the token of NATO bombs.

[Kenneth Zhu]

Those fans from South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong has pushed those obsolete junks into priceless treasure.

[kevinkr]

The EI plant in Nis most definitely still exists! Currently they are producing a variety of different types, before disseminating bogus information on this forum please why don't you do some research ?

Here is a link or two, there are lots of others:

http://www.eierc.com/rc/products.htm

http://www.tubedepot.com/ei.html showing current production available stateside.

Also while EI makes a knock off of the Telefunken 12AX7A, the plant was licensed by Philips (and used mostly Philips tooling) to manufacture tubes starting in 1951. Today they specialize mostly in audio type tubes, and custom designs like the KT90/KT99.

[Kenneth Zhu]

Maybe the dealer there wants to push up the price.

[Zen Mod]

Originally posted by kevinkr
The EI plant in Nis most definitely still exists! Currently they are producing a variety of different types, before disseminating bogus information on this forum please why don't you do some research ?

Here is a link or two, there are lots of others:

http://www.eierc.com/rc/products.htm

http://www.tubedepot.com/ei.html showing current production available stateside.

Also while EI makes a knock off of the Telefunken 12AX7A, the plant was licensed by Philips (and used mostly Philips tooling) to manufacture tubes starting in 1951. Today they specialize mostly in audio type tubes, and custom designs like the KT90/KT99.

agree with everything except with "Currently they are producing" ;

that can't be absolutely true ,unfortunately .
all I know is rumors about selling NOS and producing (if anything) just garbage.....
I hope I hope I hope that it's just rumor;
several other subsidiaries in EI concern are definitely kaput ,probably sold for pocket money.....mebbe if soon someone enough smart do the same with EI RC (toob house) ,fresh production can be true...........just imagine power triode in KT90 bottle!

edit:
quote from EI site :
"Last modified: 26.01.2003"

this is most recent date I found

[Kenneth Zhu]

I find a lot of gold pinned recent products being sold currently on many major audio forums or spare parts dealers.

Where do they come from? OEM?