advertisement


Brimar valves, trying to start UK production.

Excellent, if they really can start manufacturing again using Mullard tooling and emulating Mullard quality control the world will be a better place. Someone tried something similar in Blackburn fairly recently, but I think it was tied to another company that went under so they only actually produced tubes for a few months. I can't remember the brand name, but they were apparently pretty decent. There is certainly a market for really good ECC81/2/3, EL34/84, KT66/88, GZ32/34s etc as Chinese ones are pretty nasty and Putin's gangster capitalism Russia is a pale shadow of the former USSR when it comes to tube quality.
 
They have actually been going for some time now. Exhibited at the last two NVCF shows and have a regular full page ad in the BVWS magazine for the past few issues, showing what they currently offer.
 
Tony L said:
Someone tried something similar in Blackburn fairly recently, but I think it was tied to another company that went under so they only actually produced tubes for a few months. I can't remember the brand name, but they were apparently pretty decent.
Click to expand...

It was Techtubes. I have one of their E813CC (ECC83) valves NOS boxed. I shan't be using it as it's ultra rare and collectable.

http://www.effectrode.com/techtube-blackburn-e813cc/
 
That's the company. Very interesting design, quite unlike any ECC83 I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot!).
 
I used to work in the Mullard Mitcham factory, though it was owned by Philips at the time. I wonder what tubes were made there.
 
dan m said:
I used to work in the Mullard Mitcham factory, though it was owned by Philips at the time. I wonder what tubes were made there.
Click to expand...

A former colleague was a Mullard apprentice and worked on improvements to the DK96 back in the late fifties but I don`t think they were making production valves there. They did make CRTs until about 1960.
Mitcham was largely Ferrite production in the sixties.
Mullard was owned by Philips since 1927.
 
dan m said:
I used to work in the Mullard Mitcham factory, though it was owned by Philips at the time. I wonder what tubes were made there.
Click to expand...

My mate Graham Adamson went to work there around 1967. I also remember going there to pick up a new CRT in the mid 70's for a 26 in TV that I built from scratch.
 
dan m said:
I used to work in the Mullard Mitcham factory, though it was owned by Philips at the time. I wonder what tubes were made there.
Click to expand...

Mullard were in partnership with Philips since the 1920s! Mitcham was one of the first factories and pre-dates Blackburn. Lots of fabulous tubes made there and production continued well into the '80s with a lot of the military CV4003, CV4004, CV4024 (ECC81/2/3 etc) being made there. I have a few Mitcham Mullards in my stash, ECC81s and ECC83s mainly. Nice tubes for sure. What did you do at the factory?
 
Maintaining that old machinery must be a challenge, no original spare parts.
Worse they have to conform with modern health and safety legislation, which must be challenging for glass sealing
 
Tony L said:
Mullard were in partnership with Philips since the 1920s! Mitcham was one of the first factories and pre-dates Blackburn. Lots of fabulous tubes made there and production continued well into the '80s with a lot of the military CV4003, CV4004, CV4024 (ECC81/2/3 etc) being made there. I have a few Mitcham Mullards in my stash, ECC81s and ECC83s mainly. Nice tubes for sure. What did you do at the factory?
Click to expand...

When I was there it was very much a Philips factory; no mention of Mullard at all. I worked on the development of microchannel plates used for space telescopes and image intensifiers. A lot of the work there was to produce night vision googles. Years later it was shut down and production moved to France.
 
I have a feeling the Mullard name was put out to pasture once valve and maybe oscilloscope CRTs were stopped. The whole back-story of european tube manufacture is fascinating as Philips is just so dominent and either owned brands like Mullard or made tubes that ended up with a whole raft of brand names. The etched codes on these vintage tubes is where to start as many different factories had the same plate tooling and construction techniques, e.g. you can find examples of say a I63 ECC83 made in Blackburn or Mitcham branded Mullard, and also find French made ones branded the same, and then you can find the same tubes branded Brimar, Amperex, Mazda, Telefunken etc. It is a minefield, but the thing to read is always the etched code, not the logo! That tells you where the tube was made and when, though even then it can be pretty baffling!

As an example a have a number of Brimar labelled E83CCs which are unlike any UK plate design. I eventually figured out they were re-badged US Sylvania tubes, which made no sense until I found out that Philips bought Sylvania sometime in the 1970s in order to grab an active US defence contract. Philips/Mullard made Brimar tubes, so some NOS examples ending up labelled as such makes complete sense!
 
When I was at Leevers Rich in 1969 the last few batches of Mullard ECC 81 / 82 / 83s we got were made in France, the ECC83s in particular didn`t seem quite so good.

Cossor were another good valve manufacturer who sometimes badged other brands in the old days, the shiny logo could be quite misleading.
 
They certainly kept making the military CV40xx variants in Mitcham, I have a stash of CV4024s to feed my Verdier preamp! Still nice and cheap due to huge over-production (link).
 
This site contains affiliate links for which pink fish media may be compensated.
Tony L said:
They certainly kept making the military CV40xx variants in Mitcham, I have a stash of CV4024s to feed my Verdier preamp! Still nice and cheap due to huge over-production (link).
Click to expand...

Tony your knowledge of valves could be useful to me, I've been thinking about trying different valves in the Croft pre/power - they are all ECC 83's - can you recommend some to try for fun, and perhaps even improvements if possible?
 
This site contains affiliate links for which pink fish media may be compensated.
beammeup said:
Tony your knowledge of valves could be useful to me, I've been thinking about trying different valves in the Croft pre/power - they are all ECC 83's - can you recommend some to try for fun, and perhaps even improvements if possible?
Click to expand...

Which direction do you want to take it? What tubes are in it? I assume JJs, which are reasonable for a cheap modern tube, certainly better than Chinese, but easily beaten to my ears. If you take the JJs as a starting point vintage UK Mullard, Mazda, Brimar etc would be rather more lush and 3d, US tubes e.g. RCA, GE, Sylvania crisper, tighter and more dynamic. It is more complex than that as there are many types of each, but in very broad strokes those tend to be the traits. There are some good Soviet tubes too, but quality went downhill post communism, e.g. many of the early pre-JJ Teslas are superb.
 
Yes Tony the tubes are JJs, and the sound with the Croft hosting is still excellent - but the thought that this could be taken further intrigues me.

About the direction - I like the idea of trying the very best of both worlds; a set of valves for 'lush and 3D', and a set of valves for 'fast, tight, and very dynamic' - I must say I do prefer the latter.

I would like to try playing with the sound from the line level digital input first; easy thing about the Croft is that only one valve swap is needed in the preamp, and if needs be, one in the power amp - and they aren't exotic valves like 2A3's or 300B's.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top