Unobtainable expensive "magic" semiconductors or tubes are worth faking.
ECC189 is a cheap as dirt and NOBODY in his sane mind would do that.
I bought 1000 for 500 bucks, so 50 cents each.
And they are not even Audio tubes, but TV ones and almost unusable in Audio because they are WAY more non-linear than any other tube, by design.
And there are millions out there.
Would anybody fake them?
PRAY somebody does, any fake will be way better than the original one.
By the way, I bet there are MANY in ZA, just not in any respectable shop.
Ask old TV repairmen instead.
ECC189 is a cheap as dirt and NOBODY in his sane mind would do that.
I bought 1000 for 500 bucks, so 50 cents each.
And they are not even Audio tubes, but TV ones and almost unusable in Audio because they are WAY more non-linear than any other tube, by design.
And there are millions out there.
Would anybody fake them?
PRAY somebody does, any fake will be way better than the original one.
By the way, I bet there are MANY in ZA, just not in any respectable shop.
Ask old TV repairmen instead.
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ECC189 / 6ES8 is not dirt cheap anymore. I also acquired several sleeves in the past when nobody wanted them, but now they seems to be seeked for. They have a somewhat linear zone near the max plate current at -0.5v grid, but I guess that the main purpose now is to use them as ECC88 / 6DJ8 replacement with higher distortion and different sound.
Yeah, "Variable mu" and audio tend to not go well together.
At 22mA of plate current and 0.5V of bias you'll be at 80V on the plate. If loaded with a CCS and no other load, swinging down to 0V on the grid sends the plate to 57, swinging up to 1V gets you to 100V. So that's 20V one way and 23 the other under the best of circumstances. As soon as you depart from the perfectly horizontal load line, those numbers will spread apart more.
These tubes are only pricey because people put them in their Schiit amps and talk about it a bunch of Head-fi, which drives the prices up.
At 22mA of plate current and 0.5V of bias you'll be at 80V on the plate. If loaded with a CCS and no other load, swinging down to 0V on the grid sends the plate to 57, swinging up to 1V gets you to 100V. So that's 20V one way and 23 the other under the best of circumstances. As soon as you depart from the perfectly horizontal load line, those numbers will spread apart more.
These tubes are only pricey because people put them in their Schiit amps and talk about it a bunch of Head-fi, which drives the prices up.
Yes, Gm that changes substantially with signal level is just the ticket for CF duty?
The 6ES8 / ECC189 was used in the Knifonium, a $16,000 vacuum tube music synthesizer. When you put a tube that is not widely available into a box that sells for stupid money, the tubes will get rare and expensive, due to hoarding.
Knifaudio
Click on the READ MORE link where he expounds that the American 6ES8's are junk, but I can't find any of them cheap any more.
The 6386 tube used in the old Fairchild 670 compressor is an example. A cheap RF amp tube used by the box loads in military radios in the 1950's, is now super rare and expensive. New production tubes sell for over $100 each!
The supply of 6ES8's was already dwindling from use in audio compressors and in conversion boards for old Fairchilds. The Knifonium made the rest vanish.
I have been working on a vacuum tube music synth, and will not use the 6ES8 because of it's rarity. If you look at it's published Gm VS grid voltage curves you can see that, although not perfect, they are far better than most of the pin compatible tubes. The 6BS8 and 6BC8 may work, depending on your circuit design.
Since I'm designing from scratch, I have chosen to use semi-remote cutoff pentodes. Any linearization in the gain VS control voltage curve will be done in a microprocessor.
Knifaudio
Click on the READ MORE link where he expounds that the American 6ES8's are junk, but I can't find any of them cheap any more.
The 6386 tube used in the old Fairchild 670 compressor is an example. A cheap RF amp tube used by the box loads in military radios in the 1950's, is now super rare and expensive. New production tubes sell for over $100 each!
The supply of 6ES8's was already dwindling from use in audio compressors and in conversion boards for old Fairchilds. The Knifonium made the rest vanish.
I have been working on a vacuum tube music synth, and will not use the 6ES8 because of it's rarity. If you look at it's published Gm VS grid voltage curves you can see that, although not perfect, they are far better than most of the pin compatible tubes. The 6BS8 and 6BC8 may work, depending on your circuit design.
Since I'm designing from scratch, I have chosen to use semi-remote cutoff pentodes. Any linearization in the gain VS control voltage curve will be done in a microprocessor.
Thank's all for the comments and advice, so I suppose ebay 6es8/ ECC189 valves would not be the real deal , I will search some further, much appreciated !
Thank's all for the comments and advice, so I suppose ebay 6es8/ ECC189 valves would not be the real deal , I will search some further, much appreciated !
So you read/understood NOTHING of what we posted
, and anything you read you take as confirmation of of your preconceived ideas.I repeat once more :NO FAKE ECC189 ON EBAY OR ANYWHERE ELSE, NOT WORTH IT.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it would never happen that someone would take some cheaper tube with the same pinout and repaint them...….but why would you do this for a tube that you sell for $5 to $20, when you can repaint a cheap 12AX7 with Telefunken lettering and get $100.
I can say that some of the 6386's found on Ebay ARE repainted 5670's which ARE identical except for the way the grids are wound, which can not be determined from the outside....until you try them in a compressor.
I checked with the tube seller where I get most of my tubes. He sells tubes by the thousands per week. He sold 14 6ES8's for ALL of 2019, 10 in 2018, none in 2017 or 2016, and has only 6 in stock now.....in a warehouse of 2.5 MILLION tubes.
For the normal case where audio is expected to be amplified cleanly, a variable Mu tube would NOT be a good choice. It will however generate primarily second order harmonic distortion, so in some circuits a well defined distortion profile COULD be used to cancel some of the unwanted second harmonic distortion in another stage. In practice the cancellation is not perfect, and can leave other artifacts that sound worse than second harmonic distortion.....but in the audio world "different" sound is "great" sound in the hands of the right salesman / con artist.
Variable Mu triodes are the hot ticket in a variable gain cell, which is a critical part of an audio compressor used in studios and radio broadcasting. In this application the variable Mu triodes are used in a balanced (push pull) arrangement such that the second harmonic distortion is cancelled. The amount of audio voltage applied to the tubes is often far lower than what is seen in consumer audio equipment, such that the tube swings through a much smaller section of that nonlinear curve. Remember that these tubes were originally designed for the first stage in TV and radio receivers, where signals are usually in the microvolt to millivolt range.
Hallo valve guy's.
I am struggling to get these valves where I live. I see they are sold on Ebay. I know a lot of semiconductors, electronic components sold there are fake/ rebranded stuff. I suppose this would be same with valves ?
Am I correct not to trust valves from those sites ?
Hi, I have a pair of genuine 6es8's that you can have for free. PM me your mailing address. Only cost to you is reimburse for mailing after you get them. If you want more, contact Hugh Dean, aka Aksa, as he has plenty and is where I got mine.
Steve
Variable mu tubes were part and parcel of most old tube radios and helped in controlling overload of the input signal of which I spent decades repairing including communications receivers.
Their characteristics are not conjusive to audio although now I see a use has been found for them,my problem is that some audio forums treat them on a par with normal audio tube types just because of (supposed ) subjective listening.
Their characteristics are not conjusive to audio although now I see a use has been found for them,my problem is that some audio forums treat them on a par with normal audio tube types just because of (supposed ) subjective listening.