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dude250711today at 3:10 PM2 repliesview on HN

Western Electric revives U.S. vacuum tube manufacturing at AXPONA 2026, showcasing 300B and 308B amps and plans for new 12AX7 production:

https://www.ecoustics.com/news/western-electric-axpona-2026


Replies

adrian_btoday at 3:42 PM

Interesting.

While I agree that for a powerful audio amplifier the only good choices are either a state-of-the-art switching amplifier made with gallium nitride transistors or an archaic amplifier with vacuum tubes (while the intermediate historical technologies between these 2 extremes are obsolete), unfortunately it is very difficult to indulge in the latter choice, when the prices of good vacuum tubes have become orders of magnitude greater than in their heyday, e.g. at your link the price for a matched pair of WE300-B is $1500 and for a matched quad $3100, while the price of a complete ready-to-use amplifier is too ridiculously high.

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drfuchstoday at 3:24 PM

Kind of astonishing that they managed to retain the institutional / folk knowledge to be able to create a new vacuum tube product, never mind the machinery and inputs to manufacture them.

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