My local GC has dozens of tubes on the shelf all the sudden. is the "Crisis" over?

J

JimAnsell

Well-known member
Mesa, GT, and some tung sols, all on the shelf at my local gc. power and pre. are they just digging up overstock, or are we back in business here? All my tubes are middle aged, but still going strong, so i'm not super in need, but its nice to see them back just in case.
 
thats kinda what i was getting at... i never thought they could possibly be in that short of supply, that suddenly, since they were in regular production. if there are still some nos military tubes left from 50+ years ago, then there are probably warehouses full of modern tubes in some god forsaken part of the world.
 
I'm taking a different slant here. No I don't think it's over, I think you are seeing some stores that had orders in process that are being fulfilled at higher prices with what stock was left over or in transit as the crap hit the fan. No doubt there was panic buying but that said, alot of online dealers still don't have product and most importantly the product they do have, prices certainly have not come back down.

At the end of the day two companies aren't producing, one due to the war and one due to being shutdown. Throw in the fact that JJ was backlogged and then the panic and product became obviously scarce.

Right now, JJ will catch up or has, Psvane is getting product out there. That's something at least. Be nice to see the US Western Electric producing for the guitar market but what's the turnaround time there? I think you can write off the Reflektor plant for the foreseeable future unless Mike Matthews can swing something. Give the guy credit he's navigated some murky waters for years.
 
Well, like we've all said in every other tube thread like this.... There never was a shortage, just a bunch of tan pants wearing idiots and the New York Times spreading their idiotic fears.... Yes I actually read an article from the NYT where they were quoting people from the tan pants club about "stock up on your tubes now". Of course the first places to be hit were the major distributors. I had to buy a quad of replacement tubes a few weeks ago and had no issues getting them from a respectable vendor at a fair price (read as a normal non jacked up to scalp a profit price).

For the major distributors, I'm guessing JJ is starting to catch back up on their backlog of orders and sending some product out. GC s probably sending them to select stores where they can sell for higher prices.
 
I don't own any tan pants but I think the fear was the availability of Russian tubes versus the likely continued availability of Slovakian JJ tubes or Chinese tubes. The Pete Thorn EL34 shootout video got many people thinking they needed to load up on the Russian tubes due to Friedman stating the JJ tubes and the Chinese tubes were having an unacceptably high failure rate. I think for this reason many people were looking at the Russian tubes as the way to go and those dried up really quickly.
 
Eurotubes is 10 minutes from my house and Bob and Eddie Pletka are long time friends of mine, pre Eurotubes days.....per them both, there is no current issue on supply, they have a shit ton of tubes and pending orders in the chute. Their biggest problem and the reason they needed to shut down orders is because people flipped out and they sold 3 months of tubes in a weekend, and they don't have enough machines to test everything at a pace to ship them out. Stopping sales had nothing to do with supply and everything to do with available test equipment.
 
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* velcro-fly * said:
Eurotubes is 10 minuets from my house and Bob and Eddie Pletka are long time friends of mine, pre Eurotubes days.....per them both, there is no current issue on supply, they have a shit ton of tubes and pending orders in the chute. Their biggest problem and the reason they needed to shut down orders is because people flipped out and they sold 3 months of tubes in a weekend, and they don't have enough machines to test everything at a pace to ship them out. Stopping sales had nothing to do with supply and everything to do with available test equipment.
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Right. The guys at Eurotubes told me that there is not going to be an issue with JJ since they are in a NATO protected country. I think alot of people took to heart what Dave Friedman said about the JJ and Chinese tubes being problematic and that the Russian tubes were the only way to go for reliability. Hence the panic when the war started.
 
Buying a bunch of tubes adds up fast, I’ll bet the average guitarist stocking up only buys a few 12ax7’s and a pair/quad of power tubes and that’s it. I can’t imagine a ton of tube amp owners just went out and dropped $500+ on a whim (though some probably did). If all those people who were planning tube purchases in the next couple months all bought in one weekend that would probably look like a ‘run’ on tubes, and stock would return to normal not long after.

It’s like every time I’ve seen a run on gasoline in the past few years, all those people who put $10 at a time into their car fill their tanks but they have nowhere else to put fuel so demand quickly returns to normal.
 
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