Sus tubes ?

[nkg]

I have seen on ebay JAN 12AT7WC made by GEC in the USA I was just curious about the boxes having a bar code on them , should one be concerned about this any comments would be welcome.
nkg

[Alain Dupont]

nkg,

>> ebay JAN 12AT7WC made by GEC ... a bar code on them

Never seen a bar code on Tube boxes for these series, it must be a label introduced
by the distributor. Or new boxes for old NOS tubes!

Alain.

[astouffer]

Isn't GEC a british company? Maybe the tubes are of late manufacture meant for military replacement.

[EC8010]

Originally posted by astouffer
Isn't GEC a british company?

GEC was a British company. Their chairman insisted on keeping £1bn in ready assets to tide the company over in the event of untoward events, but the financial boys in the City engineered his replacement by people more disposed towards gambling that money on the stock market (and coincidentally earning the City boys a nice commission). The gamble failed, the untoward events arrived, and GEC collapsed. Still, look on the bright side, the City boys were able to buy themselves Porsches.

[alfiax]

I suspect you mean GE and not GEC. The last domestically produced US tubes were made in the early to mid 80s; certainly a reasonable time period for either the manufacturer or stocker to add a bar code.

[kevinkr]

USA made GE and Philips ECG Jan types all had bar codes right from the factory from the early 1980's onwards - I have had scads of these over the years.

IMHO These late production Jan tubes are nothing special (at best) in most cases, and in the case of more common tubes including 12AX7A/12AU7A/6DJ8 or their industrial # equivalents you might just be better off with current production JJ - usually somewhat cheaper too. Late Jan types are usually reliable, but whether or not they sound good is another question.

[nkg]

Yes they are GE and they were going for AUS$7 each

[Geek]

I've seen bar codes on the boxes.

Often these tubes were obtained in bulk. The distributor put them in generic white boxes, stuch a sticker on it with info/barcode and sent them to the client.

[kevinkr]

In many cases the manufacturer packed Jan tubes in individual boxes for the US military - those that weren't are usually very clearly marked as packed by another entity.

I have bought tubes that were in bulk packing as well.

The US government in most cases purchased tubes direct from the factory - no distributor involved due to the huge volumes. (I used to work for Sylvania and this is what I was told.)

At the very end of the era a lot of rather expensive JAN tubes appeared at outfits like Newark which sold single GE6550JANTX for $150 U.S. in the mid 1980's. I managed to get a bunch of these free from the place I was working for at the time, they were literally going to throw them out.. I put them in MKIII's I was refurbing for sale.

For $7 AU I guess these surplus tubes are worth the risk, again though they often sound quite mediocre.. IMO most US made 12AT7 sound lousy. European made ones were often very much better.

[Dave Cigna]

Originally posted by kevinkr
IMO most US made 12AT7 sound lousy. European made ones were often very much better.

Now that's interesting. I've never liked them and could not figure out why anyone today bothers with them; there are (in my opinion) far better sounding tubes available in that class. But, maybe the ECC81 fans are tasting a different valve.

-- Dave