Sorry to hear you’re shutting down. Been following your work for years, haven’t have time to build anything in ages, and now that I’m retired I find I nearly missed out! PayPal inbound for a TSE-II.
Thank you for all your contributions over the years, and good luck on your future endeavors.
Thank you for all your contributions over the years, and good luck on your future endeavors.
Hey George keep us posted on what boards you have left. Still enjoying my SSE from a few years ago. Finally thinking of another build and would like it to be a tubelab! Thanks for sharing your love of quality tube amplifiers with us!
Just received an email from George, he said Tubelab will be around for another year!
Not sure about the whole year yet as the other half of this corporation still wants it gone. It does appear that I will be selling boards well into this year as I just ordered a small batch of SSEs, TSE-IIs and SPPs.
So why the extra expense for gold plating in THT? I order the default Sn/PB even for smt. I hand solder smt as it is.
I think sometimes I get Sn/Pb plate over Au, which to me is a loss for the fab, no gain for me but if everyone wants Au.
For something that gets hot like tube designs, I think I would spend the extra $ on higher Tg pcb material unless you did that as well.
When I solder gold pins I see the Au sputtering off, little specs cover the pcb area, its simply sparkly.
Happy soldering, I am back at it again, got the day off yesterday for yet another scope of my guts, all good 🙂 I think i'd rather be soldering
We plan to hire our grandaugther to solder and learn assembly, just like the ole Motorola days, in the basement
have fun
I think sometimes I get Sn/Pb plate over Au, which to me is a loss for the fab, no gain for me but if everyone wants Au.
For something that gets hot like tube designs, I think I would spend the extra $ on higher Tg pcb material unless you did that as well.
When I solder gold pins I see the Au sputtering off, little specs cover the pcb area, its simply sparkly.
Happy soldering, I am back at it again, got the day off yesterday for yet another scope of my guts, all good 🙂 I think i'd rather be soldering
We plan to hire our grandaugther to solder and learn assembly, just like the ole Motorola days, in the basement
have fun
If I get boards made for personal projects, or test boards, and they will be populated within a few weeks or months of arrival I specify HASL, Hot Air Solder Leveling. This is just good old solder made flat with a hot air process. The original TSE board and the first batch of SSE's (25 or 50 boards) were the only HASL boards I sold. There are two reasons that I pay the ($1 to $2 per board) cost adder for ENIG, the Electroless Nickel Immersion Gold coating on the boards I sell.
Even a good quality HASL board will grow a thin oxide layer on the shiny parts over time. It may take a year or more, but I know that I have seen issues when trying to solder a 5+ year old board or repair a dead board that was built 10+ years ago. This makes the board harder to solder and increases the likelihood of a cold or "dry" solder joint that will become brittle over time. It's one of the main reasons that guitar amp guys hate PC boards.
Gold has an affinity for solder, just ask any of the operators that ran the wave solder machines at Motorola (or anywhere else) in the 70's what happened to their shiny gold jewelry. Just from working near a running machine lots of those fancy disco era gold chains turned grey over time. Eventually a row of lockers were installed near the machines. Many builders of my boards have not ever soldered on a PC board before, ENIG on oversized pads makes them easier to build.
Even a good quality HASL board will grow a thin oxide layer on the shiny parts over time. It may take a year or more, but I know that I have seen issues when trying to solder a 5+ year old board or repair a dead board that was built 10+ years ago. This makes the board harder to solder and increases the likelihood of a cold or "dry" solder joint that will become brittle over time. It's one of the main reasons that guitar amp guys hate PC boards.
Gold has an affinity for solder, just ask any of the operators that ran the wave solder machines at Motorola (or anywhere else) in the 70's what happened to their shiny gold jewelry. Just from working near a running machine lots of those fancy disco era gold chains turned grey over time. Eventually a row of lockers were installed near the machines. Many builders of my boards have not ever soldered on a PC board before, ENIG on oversized pads makes them easier to build.
FWIW: The added expense of ENIG does not have to be that much. I often order 100-250 boards and the gold adds $15-20 for the lot, so 10 cents or so per board.
As George said, the gold is much easier to work with.
Tom
As George said, the gold is much easier to work with.
Tom
Due to low volumes and uncertainty, I have been ordering boards in lots of 20 at a time. ENIG adds $25 to the lot cost for a $1.25 per board adder. I believe that it's worth the added expense for an average board builder.
Put the board name (SSE, SPP etc) and the qty of each in the comments box. Make sure that Paypal has your current shipping address or include it in the comments box as well. The SSE, SPP, and TSE-II boards are $35 each, the UD boards are $25, and the UNSET power head (output stage only) is $20. There are no more UNSET amp boards. Flat rate shipping is $8 to a US address and $15 internationally. Boards are typically mailed out the business day after receipt of payment.
I do not have a shopping cart page. I have both boards in stock, and they can be ordered by sending payment via Paypal to tech@tubelab.com
Put the board name (SSE, SPP etc) and the qty of each in the comments box. Make sure that Paypal has your current shipping address or include it in the comments box as well. The SSE, SPP, and TSE-II boards are $35 each, the UD boards are $25, and the UNSET power head (output stage only) is $20. There are no more UNSET amp boards. Flat rate shipping is $8 to a US address and $15 internationally. Boards are typically mailed out the business day after receipt of payment.
I had to pay quite a lot of surcharges for my last delivery of boards. Sweden is always enforces the VAT addition, then charges another $8 for admin. If all of us European consumers had been coordinated we could have arranged to have a lot of boards shipped to somebody in Germany, for instance, and then distributed from there.
I did not have to pay so much money to have a top plate cut with water jets for my Baby Huey build. I think a board plus a matching top plate would only be about twice the price and would bring a whole new audience.
I did not have to pay so much money to have a top plate cut with water jets for my Baby Huey build. I think a board plus a matching top plate would only be about twice the price and would bring a whole new audience.
Board orders normally drop off in the summer months as people spend more time outdoors. This year has been much worse than usual. There were two orders in May, one in June, and one in July. By this time, I began to think that Tubelab would indeed die since the fixed costs run about $150 / month. I was surprised with three board orders in August, leaving me with only ONE TSE-II board left, so I spent most of what was left in the Paypal account on a box full of shiny new TSE-II boards. Everything is in stock except for the original UNSET amp board. Since I am working on a redesign of the driver stage, I have not restocked the old UNSET design. The UNSET Power Heads remain unaffected, and I have laid out a 12 pin Compactron version, but have not yet bought any boards.
Attachments
You're not alone. I've seen a similar pattern. It seems people have started to return to the soldering irons, though.
Tom
I hope I'm not too late. I just wanted to make sure you have TSE II and SSE board available as I like to get one of each.
See the picture in Post #1 of this thread. I just got a 16 pound shipment of boards. All have been restocked. Since there have only been 4 board orders in 2025, I should have plenty for a long time. Ordering and prices are still the same. SSE, TSE-II, ans SPP are $35 each the Universal Driver and UNSET Power Head are $20 each. Flat rate shipping for up to 4 boards to a US address is $8 or $15 to an international address.
So, a TSE-II and an SSE is $78 to a US address. Paypal address is tech@tubelab.com
Make sure that Paypal has your correct address or put it in the comments box along with which boards you want and the Qty.
George,
Good to know that you are all stocked up.
Happy selling!
For international shipment, what service would you be using?
Good to know that you are all stocked up.
Happy selling!
For international shipment, what service would you be using?
I use Paypal's shipping service which uses the USPS inside the US. International shipments vary depending on the destination country and weight. Shipments to Canada, some of Europe and Australia seem to go via the USPS to the destination country where they are handed off to the postal system in the destination country. Other destinations are sent by the USPS to Global Post in Chicago, New York or Los Angeles. There are a few places where there is no affordable shipping service, and I must charge the actual shipping cost. There are also some countries where the local post and or customs officials are corrupt. After one or two losses by myself or a few others in similar businesses, we don't ship there at all.
I bought the big box full of boards now since it looks like government tariffs are coming and the small order exemption will go away. These fees and the surcharges by the shipping companies to collect those fees will likely make budget PC boards from China a thing of the past. The USPS has already sent me notice via email that they do not have the resources to collect tariffs from every delivery that originates from China, so they will no longer deliver small shipments from China. My guess is that UPS and Fedex will charge a substantial surcharge to collect those tariffs.
I switched to Chinese boards in 2021 when the American company that I had been using since before Tubelab existed screwed up 4 out of 5 board orders. I ordered TSEs and got SSEs right after I had just bought a bunch of SSEs. I had no TSEs for a month and it took me over a year to sell all the SSEs. I ordered and paid for a batch of SPPs but never got them. When I did get boards, they were not mine. Then they sent me a batch of TSE-IIs that had over sized pads which shorted to the nearby pads. I have never had an issue with JLCPCB in China.
Tubelab lost money last year. Low sales volume and shipping were the biggest reasons. Tubelab made enough money to pay for itself and fund all of my crazy electronics experiments in most years. The break even point varies but I need to sell about 100 boards a year to come out even. I sold 92 boards in 2024. I sold 210 boards in 2023. The yearly average since 2007 is 118. I used to buy boards in batches of 50. Now its 20 which raises the cost per board.
I have charged $8 for US shipping since 2008 even though the USPS has raised their rates every year since then. They currently charge me about $9 to send that board. International shipping is worse as the rate varies from country to country, but all are more than $15 except for one board sent to Canada.
The easy fix is to raise shipping rates, but that will cause sales to drop. I have only sold 7 boards in 2025, so it might not matter. We will see how sales and income go as the year goes on.
I bought the big box full of boards now since it looks like government tariffs are coming and the small order exemption will go away. These fees and the surcharges by the shipping companies to collect those fees will likely make budget PC boards from China a thing of the past. The USPS has already sent me notice via email that they do not have the resources to collect tariffs from every delivery that originates from China, so they will no longer deliver small shipments from China. My guess is that UPS and Fedex will charge a substantial surcharge to collect those tariffs.
I switched to Chinese boards in 2021 when the American company that I had been using since before Tubelab existed screwed up 4 out of 5 board orders. I ordered TSEs and got SSEs right after I had just bought a bunch of SSEs. I had no TSEs for a month and it took me over a year to sell all the SSEs. I ordered and paid for a batch of SPPs but never got them. When I did get boards, they were not mine. Then they sent me a batch of TSE-IIs that had over sized pads which shorted to the nearby pads. I have never had an issue with JLCPCB in China.
Tubelab lost money last year. Low sales volume and shipping were the biggest reasons. Tubelab made enough money to pay for itself and fund all of my crazy electronics experiments in most years. The break even point varies but I need to sell about 100 boards a year to come out even. I sold 92 boards in 2024. I sold 210 boards in 2023. The yearly average since 2007 is 118. I used to buy boards in batches of 50. Now its 20 which raises the cost per board.
I have charged $8 for US shipping since 2008 even though the USPS has raised their rates every year since then. They currently charge me about $9 to send that board. International shipping is worse as the rate varies from country to country, but all are more than $15 except for one board sent to Canada.
The easy fix is to raise shipping rates, but that will cause sales to drop. I have only sold 7 boards in 2025, so it might not matter. We will see how sales and income go as the year goes on.
It would be interesting if there was someone in Europe who could hold a bit of stock. When I receive an order from the US in Sweden, I have to pay the VAT, and also a significant fee for 'admin'. I think other European countries have lesser costs, but the admin fee is just a one-off per order.