| Apologies for my Auntie-Spaminal eating your first email up.
Speaking from the perspective of a manufacturer:
On the new JJ 6386, the first problem is the dang price! Retail price is $120 bucks??? And my wholesale cost ain't that much less.
So even to buy, say, 50 tubes to test and grade in order to form an opinion about them, we're looking at around $5000 bucks investment. I don't know about you guys, but we're in conservation mode right now in this economy. I'm not looking for extra expenses right now.
Anyway, suppose we get the tubes in and then, say we like them, and the yield is decent, now let's come up with tens of thousands of more dollars to get a couple hundred tubes in stock, which, depending on yield, and depending on demand, determined by price, which can't go too much higher than retail cost of the tubes to start with, and wholesale cost is not much less, why would I go through that huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge investment and tie up massive amounts of cash to bless a tube that would make us an extra $20 or $40 net profit per Variable MuŽ Limiter sold? (Presuming we make them an option and charge more for them, or just raise the price and charge more).
The number$ do not work for me to get involved to put this tube into production units, at this price structure.
I can't imagine in a couple of months looking at a reject tray of 100 tubes, tubes that were too noisy or whose two triodes don't match well enough to use them, and thinking, wow: look at that small pizza box of a hundred bad tubes worth $12,000! Will JJ take them back?
We have a sure and certain solution now with the 6BA6 T-Bar mod. They are reasonably priced tubes and easily available. I have thousands of them in stock and I have already invested in this solution. We get superb yield from them since most of them can find a friend, and find 3 other friends to be perfectly matched quad pairs in the units. The curves lay up almost exactly upon the 6386's curves. They function substantially the same, if not better due to the ability to perfectly match phase-halves and stereo sets instead of selecting for "decently" matched pairs in one glass bottle.
The 6BA6 T-Bar mod is proven and works great.
Nothing precludes end users from trying the new JJ 6386. If JJ wanted to send me 50 samples to test, bless (or reject), and return, we'd be happy to put the time in to see how tight their matching is and how quiet and lo-microphonic they are (or aren't). I just have no need to purchase a stock of tubes we will not be using in production at this time, tubes I cannot really turn a reasonable profit return on at this cost structure. If they were 1/10th or 1/20th of the cost, like all the other little dual triodes we use, maybe, sure. That wouldn't break the bank.
Remember I am speaking as a manufacturer about costing and business issues in this post and I am not judging the tubes themselves, having not tested any yet. |