It was a somewhat bizarre device, but interesting nonetheless. I was not optimistic about their survival either. I was also skeptical, but given enough time I bet they would have become something interesting, especially if they started making bigger tubes.
That's sad to hear about SED. They are one of my favorite current-production manufacturers for power tubes.
That's sad to hear about SED. They are one of my favorite current-production manufacturers for power tubes.
I believe they were wise in their moves but a bit too conservative.I believe they rightly sent first samples to musicians and later to consumers.That would help them get some feedback.I know they were almost ready to start supplying distributors.IMO it all had bad timing.If they were able to start selling to distributors earlier(before the Chinese stoped buying CRT's),they could have better luck.They were a bit late and it cost.It is pointless to feel sorry now.All of us have some $100 worth of useless things in the basement and never bother.That's how much it would cost to try them when they were available,even for the sake of curiosity.Now?Let's enjoy the Chinese and Russian ECC83's.
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I believe they were wise in their moves but a bit too conservative.I believe they rightly sent first samples to musicians and later to consumers.That would help them get some feedback.I know they were almost ready to start supplying distributors.IMO it all had bad timing.If they were able to start selling to distributors earlier(before the Chinese stoped buying CRT's),they could have better luck.They were a bit late and it cost.It is pointless to feel sorry now.All of us have some $100 worth of useless things in the basement and never bother.That's how much it would cost to try them when they were available,even for the sake of curiosity.Now?Let's enjoy the Chinese and Russian ECC83's.
Some of the New Sensor Russian made 12AX7A are quite decent so from the perspective of the available 12AX7A the demise of Tech Tubes is hardly a calamity, from the standpoint of having more choice and the possibility of other devices in the future it is a definite loss.
Most of their focus incidentally was on selling gun assemblies into the Chinese market, the audio tube development was at best treated as an afterthought. Had they focused on the audio side and built a lean R&D establishment with a very minimalistic manufacturing arm they might have succeeded. At the time for their demise they had over 100 employees (hardly lean) - hardly a small operation when there was no viable source of revenue. Think they could have managed with a quarter of that and saved a lot of payroll expense, but they were unionized and had agreements they probably needed to honor. I believed they planned poorly and optimistically (based on a very uninformed outsider's viewpoint) - all too easy to do as I have experienced from being involved in a start-up which didn't make it. Under the best case scenario the odds were entirely stacked against them, a major economic downturn and reliance on selling an outmoded technology into a much lower cost manufacturing environment made the odds significantly worse and had as much to do with their failure as anything. It's quite unfortunate, but not too surprising.
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