vacuum_tubes
pfm Member
anubisgrau said:
Not inferior just different, they each have strengths and weaknesses. Personally I prefer a 45 or 2a3 over the 300B but the midrange on a 300B is hard to better.
Are high end 300B valves worth it ?
- Thread starter Ianp
- Start date
Not inferior just different, they each have strengths and weaknesses. Personally I prefer a 45 or 2a3 over the 300B but the midrange on a 300B is hard to better.
Darren L
Egalitarian
I don't know about 'worth it' but some of the prices are shocking, £2K for a pair of valves? What makes them so expensive? How many hours are they likely to last?
As much as I do generally like valve amplifiers, well any that I've heard, I now feel that the price of replacement valves has made buying a valve poweamp prohibitive.
As much as I do generally like valve amplifiers, well any that I've heard, I now feel that the price of replacement valves has made buying a valve poweamp prohibitive.
Joe
pfm Member
Nothing "makes" them expensive...It's just the price that maker wants to charge.
They can be had for reasonable sums and the construction is just the same...same design, materials and hours in the making. Otherwise they wouldn't be 300b"s would they ?
See here.........
https://www.hificollective.co.uk/valves/300b.html
Not that simple, although a significant contributing reason for the high prices is probably to do with volumes. If the whole process was mechanised, you'd be taking a lot of labour out, but automation would be a totally massive investment and you'd need pretty slick setters/engineers looking after the line.
When I worked at GE Lighting in Leicester, some of the lamps that were made were easily as complicated to make as any valve, but they were "rattled through" in numbers. That said, many of those lamps trade prices were not dissimilar to the retail prices on HiFi Collective.
BS and marketing for specific markets, where such valves are thought of as the holy grail...