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Western Electric New 300B made in USA 2018

PRR

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Joined 2003
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...the guy holding the lightning bolts....

"Spirit of Communication" originally "Genius of Telegraphy", but familiarly called "Golden Boy".

This was New York City's second-largest sculpture, after the Statue of Liberty, over 14 tons (or maybe 10). He was hoisted to the roof of 195 Broadway Manhattan in 1916, as AT&T was becoming a huge operation. 1984 he was moved to the foyer of the hideous Chippendale building. AT&T was shrinking; Golden Boy moved to in front of the Basking Ridge office, which was sold, then to the lobby of the old Long Lines building in Bedminster. Here his baroque near-naked butt was right against the escalator that all employees had to use to reach upper floors. Did not do morale any good.

A dear friend "knew" him in all four places. I've seen him in both NJ spots; he's impressive, but very anachronistic in sleek modern buildings. (I was not allowed to ride the escalator behind his butt; AT&T had become ultra suspicious of visitors.)

AT&T basically died, SBC bought the corpse and GB has been seen in Dallas.

The story of Western Electric has little to do with Golden Boy, except all through the 1930s AT&T used GB clip-art on EVERYTHING. WE started as general electrical supplies, eventually including telephone gear. (They were West of the Hudson hence the name.) They were a supplier to the Bell System and others, but at some point Bell wanted more control of manufacturing (and maybe corner the supply to competitors), bought WE. Mid-1980s AT&T splintered, WE fractured mainly as Lucent, tube production already faded but I guess nobody got the memo to scrap the stampers.
 
I think the new WE300b is born at the right time. People want it. The nearest copy was the SV300b from St Pertersbourg , it looked identical and the sound was not far the WE. From Russia. To built a modern old tube is no problem but with labor and money.

So New WE has just a little gap to get it right.

Gillou.
 

PRR

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Joined 2003
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WOW! Things Bell didn't talk about!

PDF page 13: WE founded as Gray and Barton. This IS the same Elisha Gray who Feb 14 1976 filed papers on a voice transmitter, same day as a Mr Bell. While the same-day is legally moot, there was a decade-long patent-fraud court case. In the midst of this, Bell buys Gray's company? (Western Union had most of G&B for a while, and is where the "W" comes from.)
 
I used to work over in WE/Bell Labs/Lucent Technologies - Dallas Works plant for a while. And knew some of the folks there who were also at the K.C. Works where they had the last production of the 300Bs.

One of the managers knew Charles and explained that he bought the rights then... for the Western Electric Brand and their lines. He also got all the original stock as well as everything that was in storage (it was a lot I was told and included very good inventory too.)

Westrex was making a go of it when the economy tanked. Looks like he's recovered and going about setting everything up again. I hope they start making some of the 350Bs.

Cheers,
 

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Soundhappy thanks for posting this, I’m so glad to see some more folks have interest. I’m heading to Roseville soon for my second visit and to bring home some WE300B tubes!

I’ve seen that new driver technology but have signed an NDA so all I can say is that it is really exciting what those guys at WE are up to.