Since 1993 Copyright Notice
Some notes about the history of AVVT
Successful projects have many fathers. Unsuccessful projects are orphans.
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From 1998 to 2001, our company JACMUSIC was the sole sales agent of AVVT tubes, located in the Czech Republic. I learned many good things during that period, and I have seen bad things too. It was learning by doing. We had our breakthrough projects, and we made mistakes as well. Today, with the disappearance of that company, we must put those projects already to history again. With the things we learned, all we need to do, is not forget them. Time goes by too fast.
How it all began
In the 1970's, after the disappearance of directly heated triodes like 2A3, there was indeed a period of low production and no interest. It sounds so weird perhaps today, but indeed nobody was interested in tubes at all anymore. I can remember it very well. It was said with the coming of silicon semiconductors, the electron tube was dead. I can remember people saying this with an important look on their face, being able to foresee the future. Tube factories did not close without reason.
It was in those days, that a young engineer, by the name of Alesa Vaic started his studies of Vacuum Technologies at the Prague university, sponsored by his mother. It was the last year where you could study vacuum technology. In those days the Czech Republic was suffering under Russian control. People were proudly living in their socialist paradise, hosted by the Russians, behind the iron curtain. There was no way in or out for civilians, unless you were a company owner. In Germany, where I live, a company owner is treated as a potential tax criminal. Whereas in the Russian system, a company owner is a person who gives workers an income. This was highly appreciated, and company managers were respected, and were given certain privileges, such a allowance to cross the border. Via this privilege, Alesa was in contact with some tube collectors from Italy. He knew, for some old radio tubes, prices were very high. Like you find such a tube in the CZ republic for the price of a bottle of beer, while you can sell it in Italy for a three months Czech Republic salary. So he was hunting all flea markets around Prague, for those very old balloon radio tubes. Later on, he developed the idea to jump into the replica market. I know Alesa personally very well, and he is a trial and error kind of person. Well many engineers are like that and there is nothing wrong with it, as long as you learn from your errors. He tried to set up a production for the most sought radio tubes at that moment, which sure was not the 300B, because it was still in production in China and USA. The collector's market as a matter of principle is not saving up tubes in an intelligent way. However, when production stops, people all over the world, stash whatever then can get in their drawers. This means, such users that put those in real equipment, are in competition with collectors, who put them in drawers, and the tubes usually stay in there until the collector dies. There was typically this market for replacements of the balloon type of tubes for 1920's radios. A whole series of Tungsten heated, no-getter tubes resulted from this, under the "Vaic Valve" brand. Alesa spoke some Italian, and was sometimes smuggling tubes out of the country, to Italian collectors. Alesa thought, building replicas of 1920's radio tubes would be a big hit on the market. But that did not work out. It was not because these were bad tubes. They were wonderful. It was because he killed the mechanism that kept prices high. As soon as there was production, prices fell. It was like this, how Alesa learned 300B was a more interesting tube, because it was not fully out of production at that moment, and his small scale production does not change the market relations. I still have his old design drawings for RE604, and he even build for me a working sample of RE134. In the end, he went for the 300B as his main product.
You have to imagine this. Alesa Vaic was making a new kind of 300B, at a time where you could buy only two other types. Only two! One was the Shuguang China 300B, sold under fantasy brand names by most dealers. The other was Western Electric 300B and the Cetron 300B which are clones of each other. That was all there was to buy. So Alesa picked his nose into an interesting market.
We have to say it: He was the true pioneer of tube re building.
Soon began the production of the first replica of the 300B which he called VV300B. This was in fact based on wild ideas of Alesa Vaic, and most of the design was made by his mentor at the Tesla factory, a materials specialist, who was also an excellent sports man, playing in the national Ice Hockey team. This man taught him all the fine tricks, and the art of glass blowing. I don't mention the mentor's name here, because I know him very well. He has passed away now, but he told me once, he whishes his name not to be associated with the person Alesa Vaic any more. So we have to respect this.
Most of the technical experience came from his mentor, who was at that time one of the R&D managers at Tesla. It was particularly this person who opened many doors for Alesa, and taught him the secrets of materials sourcing. Without this man, Alesa would have been a pale nobody. This was all before my days with Alesa.
Alesa's problem was at that time, there was no internet. Nobody missed it, as we didn't know. Yet, when you have no sales platform, you can do no business. To get in touch with people, he was advertising in those "free add" newspapers, that published Europe wide. You could advertise in there for free, and readers have to pay a normal price as for a newspaper. You could buy them only at gas stations or railway stations. I sometimes bought such a magazine, called "flea market". Given there was no internet, it was the only way to look over the border. Only like this you could see what people in Russia have for sale, and what people in Sweden are looking for. Under "electronics", Alesa was offering: "300B Electron tubes. Factory sales. Vaic-Valve", and his phone number. So I called him, and he told me about the problems of being isolated behind the iron curtain. He was looking for a business partner in the West. We didn't get anything going, but one year later, I read an advertisement of Dr. Kron. offering Vaic-Valve tubes. I responded to that, and Mr. Kron send me a flyer on gold colored paper, about his partnership with Alesa. Then, again I didn't follow up anymore on it.
Two years later, I read an article in a HiFi magazine, about his factory, and also was a line in there, about a break-up with his partner. That was already not Dr. Kron anymore, but it was at that time Audio Note, UK. I called Alesa, if we could talk about a partnership, and his answer was: "Yes!". One week later I was in Prague.
When I met Alesa for the first time, he was in debt, and his small factory was short before a financial break down. He picked me up from the Prague rail way station. I can tell you I didn't feel safe there. There were bare footed beggars (really!) and strange people hanging out there, looking for an opportunity, and anyone could see I was a visitor from the "West", with a suitcase. This was not the beautiful Prague you may know today as a tourist. This was the communist Prague, the workers paradise, behind the iron curtain. The railway station was filthy, and a dangerous mess. I carried a few hundred Euro (Deutschmark...) cash with me, worth a few months salaries in that country at those days. So I was glad Alesa found me right away. He was waiving a paper with VAIC on it. He was wearing dirty jeans, with holes in it, the kind I use to work on my car. He was in terrible condition, with reddish eyes of no sleep, and drinking too much coffee or whatever else he was drinking. It was clear this man was under terrible stress. He was accompanied by his charming wife Agatha, wearing for this visit mint green hot pants, the hottest you have ever seen.
First we went to his luxury apartment in the center of town. Alesa drove a brand new 6-cilinder Ford Station wagon from a leasing company, with a build in car phone. Now today we all have mobile phones, but by then these were not invented yet. However, installed analog car phones became just available for everyone. These had a massive transmitter mounted in the trunk, weighing 20kg, but on the dashboard you had quite a nice looking phone with a spiral cable on it. You could only make phone calls with it, or send SMS. I had one too in my car, by Motorola. It had cost 3500 Euro, which was at that time 1/4 of the price of a small car. In his beautiful, old style apartment in Prague, Agatha served us sandwiches, and Alesa needed just 10 minutes to come to the point. He needed money. Urgently. He had 40 employees (!) , and no orders. The business situation was a divorce procedure with Audio Note, and we decided to solve this issue before any other, and make a good agreement with Audio Note. I write it a bit dramatically here, but that was the situation indeed.
From his apartment we went to his factory, which was in a building, to be torn down. Believe me, some parts of the streets were better suited for horses than for cars. In the factory it was relative clean, but whatever it was, it was restored, self-made, repaired, or just working old stuff. The oven you see on the picture, was the only new item he had, that's why they posed in front of it. All the rest was old stuff. The size of his factory was much larger as I expected. It was huge. I was shocked by the extreme contrast between his personal lifestyle, and the poor situation in the factory. That will have to change! Agatha and Alesa could live on a low spending budget amazingly well, but that was "surviving" as Alesa always used to call this. Later I learned what that means. Like when some lager payment came in, they had this reflex to do "something nice" for themself with that money. They had been waiting for this to happen a long time, so when the moment came, they felt fully justified doing so, and leaving company bills unpaid again, as usual. On the picture you can see Agatha wearing the golden chain, Alesa bought for her on such an occasion, where Alesa got from me a large than normal invoice, payed in cash. She proudly wears it for the factory picture shooting.
In his factory, I met the person that was his Mentor during his university days. Alesa hired him as production specialist. In the factory things technically were managed well, at least it looked that way to me optically. It was just financially a mess. To use the words of the legendary Steve Jobs here: AVVT was like sinking ship, with a hole in the bottom, leaking water, and Alesa's job as a captain was to point the ship in the right direction. It was just that what I saw there. I had this feeling to preserve what we need, survive with that, and let the rest of the ship sink. One of those things to do, was a clean divorce from Audio Note, in a way we all could agree upon now, and also later. I really wanted to prevent any mud throwing. In January 1998, together with his Mentor, Agatha and Alesa and myself, the four of us went to Brighton in the UK, to visit Peter Mason and his wife, of Audio Note. Peter Qvertrup could not attend the meeting.
There was some sentiment, as Alesa's Mentor was in Brighton before, as a member of the Czech national ice hockey team, when he was young. In those days playing against the Brighton Tigers, and now seeing this small town again, knowing this is now for the last time. It was a bit naive of Alesa, to bring the last lot of 300B tubes, he made for Audio Note, and it filled almost the entire back of his station car. He said they were obliged to take them, because he has a contract, and they must pay in cash. He really thought they had to do so. This was typical of Alesa, no boundaries in his thinking. Too bad they didn't take those tubes, but ok we were allowed to sell those, even with the Audio Note brand on it. (Which could not be removed from the glass).
The negotiation in Brighton, on Jan 18th, 1998, worked out well, and there was not incredible much to say. The good part was, Audio Note accepted my role as mediator, and my basic message was, let's go apart in peace, let's cut the financials here and now, and no reputation damaging afterwards. That was a solid promise by each party, and it worked. A few weeks later we had it on paper and signed. Let me honor Audio Note here. Looking back to what happened before the divorce, I learned most details later. Learning all of that, made me realize they really were gentlemen to us, at that meeting in Brighton. They even payed our hotel. When it was time to leave, Mrs. Mason took me apart. She told me under four eyes, how she advised me to handle Alesa. That was compressed wisdom, and a very valuable advice. I did it just like that. What a respectful way to treat us. In case Audio Note reads this: Thank you!
On the way back, it got adventurous. We had the whole trunk of Alesa's Ford filled with Audio Note branded 300B tubes, Audio Note did not want to have, and our suitcases piled on top of it, and we had to drive through the black forest on the way back from the French coast. It was winter time, and we had to pass a narrow road high up in the mountains. The car was too heavy, and as it began to snow, it began to slip sidewards slowly, off the forest road, in the direction of a dangerous hill. Alesa barely managed to stop the car, but slowly...with an unpleasant crackling noise under the tires, it made little moves of half a centimeter every few seconds. We couldn't stop that, and we were ready to jump out, and let the car fall down the cliff. Alesa prepared us: If we jump out, we must do so at the same time, and each must carry as many tubes as he can, before we let the car slide off the cliff. But when we got out, the side of the road was full of rubble, which we shoveled under the wheels with our bare hands, and the car stopped sliding. So there we were, in the middle of a forest, with this strange total silence caused by snow falling in the dark. Alesa's analog car phone didn't work, because it was too far away from civilization. So what to do? We had no other option as to sleep in the car, and let the engine idle to have the heater working. Each of us had to stay awake one hour, as we were still afraid, the car would begin to slide off the hill again. When daylight came, it appeared we were only 500 meters away from some houses. A man came with snow mobile, and he cleaned the road for us. After that we could drive again, and we made it in one piece to my house. We had a good laugh about it, many times later.
souvenir :)
We clarified the whole rest by phone and fax. Email we didn't have yet. Alesa left the legal and sales details up to me. He was glad he could begin all over, and I could be his partner in this. When Alesa and myself joined up, I had some marketing ideas, that we realized later. Such as to re build a single plate 2A3. We were the first who did that. Well, and a few other things too.
To make sure these unique projects don't get forgotten, and then afterwards being claimed as someone's else great products, I will take some time here, to list the recent history of the some AVVT tube projects I did together with Alesa Vaic. Let me tell you that all those new tube projects were driven by myself. Alesa only wanted to make as much 300B as possible.
Tube |
First company |
Initiator |
Year |
Comment |
First Copier |
Second Copier |
| 300B | Vaic-Valve | Alesa Vaic | 1990 | At that time the Chinese were the only ones, still making a 300B. | Kron | Westrex. And no, that was not by Western Electric as many people think. This was by Charles Whitener, who acquired the old machines and brand name licensing from Western Electric. |
| 2A3 Single plate version | AVVT | Jac van de Walle | 1999 | I still have that FIRST tube here | Kron |
Sovtek |
| 2A3-S | EML | Jac van de Walle | 2002 | High power version of 2A3 |
JJ | |
| 2A3-mesh | AVVT | Jac van de Walle | 1999 | First mesh tube re-introduced ever. I still have that FIRST tube here. This is a unique piece of history. | Chinese made a punched plate, which is fake mesh. No followers known yet. | |
| AD1-mesh | AVVT | Alesa Vaic |
2000 | The Queen of Triodes | EML 2007 | |
| 274A/B | AVVT | Alesa Vaic | 2002 | Announced by WE ever since they had an internet home page. |
EML 2003 |
Shuguang 2004. Kron. |
| 45 | EML | Jac van de Walle | 2002 | Fullmusic 2006 | Kron |
Alesa Vaic never was the kind of person who was afraid of a risk. It was in 1998 when I first proposed the idea to Alesa to make a 2A3 tube, but he said this project was too difficult with the existing tools. His problem was the tools he needed got lost in legal struggle with a former business partner from Italy.
Then, together with my webmaster, Mattijs de Vries, (great person, who now runs his own company now) we put a survey on the AVVT website, where people could reserve those tubes, in case we would make them. We were completely overwhelmed with what we got back. Everybody needed those tubes in large quantities. Reservations of 4...10pcs were normal, and several reservations we had for 100 pcs and more. We were so excited! Well it didn't quit come that way, and we learned a few lessons from that.
Now look, what happened AFTER we re-build the 2A3 (as the first company!)
Lesson 1.
The "fun" tubes.
When you want to design new tubes, you have to understand this market. Tube collectors need in large quantities everything which is not for sale. So, the harder it is to get, the harder they "need" it for highest prices. Then when you think you have a market, you are heading for a big mistake. If you would decide to build one of those "very much needed" products, you would approach the market after a while, and say: "ok, folks we have build it, and it's on stock, and you can buy it now".
What comes then is typical. Customers make a U-turn as quickly as they can. THIS is not what they wanted. The very moment, the product is for sale, the attitude changes. Suddenly every one wants you to prove why something that is now "normally available" should cost more than NOS products, whereas NOS products have proven quality, and yours have not. Now, I am not saying people are wrong with this thinking, there is a lot of common sense it it. What I am saying, it is wrong to be so loud about needing it so much, and when time comes to do business, make a U-turn. So the buyer's idea was only to be served a rare item on a silver platter, at a moment when others do not know where to get it from. My mistake was, not understanding that each and every buyer, was on that track. If we would have sold just a few single percent of the so called "need" we would already be fine, but with zero percent it gets kind of difficult, and that's how it was.
So when you try to understand mass behavior, you will end up very confused, because you'll never understand that. This issue breaks simply down to lesson 2, and that explains it a lot better. I really learned that lesson the hard way. Of the new made 2A3, the first single plate 2A3 ever for sale again since 1945.... we sold only 10 pieces in the first 6 weeks after introduction, which takes us to Lesson #2.
Conclusion: Never invest money in a fun project, without pre paid investment.
Lesson 2.
The lemming effect
It kept puzzling me, how we could fix the technical problems and build a 2A3 mono plate. After a while I got Alesa to make a 2A3 from a 300B, just to have a beginning at this point. It was no real 2A3, it was just a 2.5 Volts 300B, same as some Chinese make them still nowadays. We made the change from a 300B into a semi 2A3 by rearranging the electrical connections of the filaments. For a 2A3 we put them all in parallel, which is actually a bad thing to do, but at least we had something to begin with. From here it all started. Then we changed something to get the Gm up, and another thing to move the Rp where we wanted it, use real 2.5 Volt filaments, etc. But it was very frustrating, because when we changed one parameter, it would change another, and this kept Alesa busy. But we were heading in the right direction, and we knew we had something here that might work.
And then (typical for Alesa) after the summer holidays he walked into my office, and said: Jac look here, this is what you need, here is a real 2A3. I put it on my tube tester, and all parameters were right! He made it all alone, while the factory was closed, and workers were in holiday. He had a room for technical projects, which the factory respectfully called the Edison room. The tube tested as a correct, good and wonderful 2A3. Our reference was an original 2A3, that we again and again compared the prototypes tube with. Note that at that time the Chinese 2A3 was the only 2A3 from new production available at that time. So again, to compare our 2A3 with, there was no JJ 2A3 (yet) , and no Sovtek 2A3 (yet), and no Fullmusic 2A3 (yet) or whatever 2A3. There was NO new production 2A3 mono plate on the market, only the SHUGUANG Dual plate 2A3 from China. So without being arrogant, please consider me as the person who initiated to rebuild the FIRST SINGLE PLATE 2A3 ever again since (let me guess...) 1950. Making the mesh tube is partially my idea, together with two persons from New York. More about that later...
The Lemming effect is the most important one in Audio business, but how could we know. Initially we published the new 2A3 on the "RAT" news group, which was the only electronic platform for tube sales at that time. No Ebay, no nothing, no websites. RAT stands for rec.audio.tubes, which was the name of the news group. Well, response was overwhelming! People needed them by many pairs each. If just a few percent of this was real, we had big business coming up.
Then, after a few months we had first production. We posted something like: "OK READY FOR SALE". It was done by my webmaster. Now look what happened. Suddenly everybody has these "yes, but...." kind of questions. They all needed good feedback from others first. The initial market potential shrunk to less than just 1 (One) percent, and these people were still interested, but for later, just not now. All those many persons who needed 10, 20, and a lot more, suddenly wanted a test pair first, to decide afterwards. And even that test pair was not needed now, but somewhere later. And when I say all, I mean ALL. The "need" was suddenly reduced to zero, and we were left with a batch of SINGLE PLATE 2A3 tubes that nobody wanted to buy. So again, you could NOT buy Russian 2A3, no KR or JJ copies, these did not exist yet. There was a Chinese dual plate 2A3, and an AVVT single plate, and that was it. Yet we got stuck with those.
Quickly, the situation started to change into a price discussion. Now, I am a business man too, not just an engineer. If somebody wants to pay 700$ for something, he might as well pay 800$. As long as he WANTS it. So a price reduction was not going to help. That would just cause more of the same mess. Such as reduce it to 600$, they will say they it has to cost 400$, and if we say 400$, they say 200$, etc., until we are cheaper as the Chinese. Things cannot work this way.
So, we sold the great great quantity of 10 pairs, to some original buyers who kept word, and the remaining tubes we decided to destroy and kill the project. Here comes another major mistake we made. Instead of that, we gave many away to magazine writers. The investment turned out to be only a waste of costs. Such useless people. Really! Absolutely nobody did anything with the tubes at all. Not even send us feedback about why they did nothing. So from there on, if magazine writers are truly interested, well we are also! But not when the interest is for free stuff only.
Now comes the crazy part. These were the marketing lessons for us, you cannot learn in school. Here comes the challenge. We were supposed to prove that if a new made tube cost 3x more than NOS, it must sound 3x better. And if not, the so called 'interested' people turn away.
From this we have drawn our conclusions, and today while AVVT is history, I still practice those lessons.
Conclusion: This market consist of followers only.
No offense meant! Actually the whole NOS market works just that way. And the stock market, and Ebay too. All markets that trade things that are available in limited quantities probably work that way. In the early days of Ebay, NOS Philco 2A3 where available for just 20$, I remember that very well. I whish I bought them all. But what is Philco? Everybody wanted only RCA, preferably matched pairs in original boxes. After RCA NOS tubes were all gone, everybody wanted good used RCA, but with >100% good test values or course. Today you can buy used RCA double plates, in 90% condition but who wants that? There are enough you can buy. That's the world of NOS, and we ran into that psychology with the 2A3 reissue. There is an early ancestor of 2A3 called Western Electric 205D, a nice balloon tube. Extremely dangerous to buy, they are from the 1920's, there can by anything wrong with it. It is so rare, I see "good testing" ones go for +1000$, and "appearance ok" tubes for hundreds of $. The sky is the limit for a superb NOS pair. Shall we re issue this? No thank you sir!
Well the only thing we can be proud of, we were at least the leaders with re-introducing the single plate 2A3. Business wise no good job, but technically we did it.
I am totally 100% confident, that as time passes, others will claim the first re-introduction of those great tubes for themselves. All we can only say, ask for PROOF, and you will see there is none. Best is to search via Google in the old rec.audio.tube files, and enter a search for: "AVVT 2A3 version on market". In 1998 this was THE tubes information platform, there was no other good one, and no Ebay. The forum is still alive, and old files are not gone. Search for AVVT and read the Tech babble. It was very hard to write something there without getting attacked by the people who seem to be there only for that reason, so I gave up on that forum.
My 1st Project with Alesa
2A3 SOLID PLATE
THIS IS THE FIRST SINGLE PLATE 2A3 TUBE, RE-BUILD AGAIN SINCE 1999!
LOOK AT THE DATE: 23.7.1999
The tube you see here, I still have. This is a unique piece. You are looking at the FIRST SINGLE PLATE 2A3, ever made again since 1950. Birthday: July 23, 1999. Here you see the picture of the FIRST solid plate 2A3 tube. It carries the Series number 1196S, and was finally inspected on July 27th. 1999. Nobody had that tube, apart from us! We felt proud of it. It still had white plates, that we made heat resistant with a special ultra-fine nickel powder that Alesa dug up from some closed down tube Tesla facility. This nickel powder was unavailable already at that time, and was NOS material to say. So we could not make series production with it. Supply would last for a few hundred tubes only. So we made it with black plates, that were more heat resistant. With black plates we could take the coolers off, and without those, it looked more like the vintage single plates. Of course now that today this tube is so successful, all competitors claim this tube as their baby, but let nobody fool you, it was AVVT's. Today you can buy them from Kron, and from Shuguang , and from JJ, and from Electro-Harmonix, and from Sovtek, and I don't know if I forgot some, or who had this bright idea to rebuild 2A3, AFTER we had the idea. |
2nd Project
|
3rd. Project
AD1 - Mesh
The queens of the triodes is not the 300B as everybody is shouting. It is the AD1. There has always been this magic about the 4Volt heated tubes, according to Mr. Vaic because of the ideal dimensions of such heater wires. We made a few AD1 solid plate, but sound was not special. Then, we used the mesh wire of the 2A3-mesh, and build a few AD1 mesh. I did a hearing comparison together with a friend of mine, (HJ Dorn) who owned a pair of self-made speakers based on two working plasma horn tweeters, he has by the German company CORONA. These are the older types, build by the inventor himself which have a larger flame diameter as later types. These older types are the best sounding tweeters ever made, they range from 500Hz to 150kHz. Later types go down not a deep in frequency. Plasma tweeters have no membrane. They are real horns and inside is plasma flame, which is compressing the air. They are high loudness, lowest distortion ever, zero phase error, and efficiency is a dream as they have an electronic input with all tube electronics. These are the fastest transducers that exists, as the only weight that needs to be moved is that of the plasma flame, which acts as a the "membrane". The weight of the ionized gas bubble is only 1/100.000 compared to a moving coil membrane. Also they have no moving parts. Well ok, the flame is moving, if you want to call that a "part". Anyway, with those speakers we could clearly hear the difference between mesh and solid plate.
The sound of the AD1-Mesh struck me, and from that moment I knew it. Mesh has that magic that some believers say it has. At first we did not sell very many, but it did inspire Yamamoto Soundcraft Japan (a loyal customer of Alesa Vaic) to build an AD1 amplifier, and from then business picked up.
4th. Project
274A
<>Another tube we reintroduced as the first company was the famous 274A rectifier tube, back in the year 2000. I noticed Shuguang has picked up this idea in 2004, and Fullmusic made a good 274A in 2002 already. Also Western Electric is announcing it since a few years now. But.... we just want to point out here who has this idea first. We didn't make very many of them. The good ones were all sold. I have some non-working prototypes that I will picture later.
5th Project
300B Mesh
It gets a bit boring.... but yes we were the first with a 300B Mesh. This was all Alesa's idea. Unfortunately he found NO WAY to make the mesh dark enough as we needed it, to get close to 40 Watt. He did have a secret way to make the mesh gray, but this was as far as he got. Together with coolers, he could make it up to 22 Watt, and later versions around 28 Watt, but that was it. These tubes were very reliable, and we made many PX25-mesh too, which we optically pretty much the same.
We felt always honored that the competition jumped on our projects. It showed we were on the right way.
Thank you Shuguang, JJ, Dr. Kron and Fullmusic, for being so inspired by our work.
THE STORY ENDS HERE WITH THE CLOSURE OF THE AVVT COMPANY IN 2001
FINAL WORDS
Because Alesa Vaic has left us at this place in history, and because we will not meet him again, we want to write a few words about how his life continued. He started a combination of a tube company and amplifier building company, but he lost the production facilities of electron tubes soon after. With some tubes he was indeed able to build, and some old AVVT stock, he managed to set up a small production of hand made amplifiers. The father of his wife Agatha build the wooden chassis, and Alesa hand-soldered the amplifiers by himself. His wife Agatha sold a small piece of forest they inherited, to bring in some cash. It did not work out. Not financially, not with the tube production, and not with Agatha. They divorced, and Alesa Vaic disappeared from the HiFi scene completely. Some years later, he was seen by somebody, selling used cars, but myself never heard anything about him any more, ever since 2001.