Tube Faking. The Swiss Connection.

Follow @emissionlabs © COPYRIGHT NOTICE All Rights Reserved Tube Faking The Swiss Connection (Last updated: 24-Jan-2016 14:49 )
Case1) Grande business. In 2003, I visited a company in Switzerland, who has access to real (NOS) tube printing tools (for the glass) and tons of NOS boxes. I was there initially to check their NOS offerings, but we could not agree on anything. They had this attitude, like they have so many millions Audiophile tubes for sale, and they are the greatest. When I got there, they wanted prices same as on Ebay, and when I offered a price below that, they reacted like I wasted their time, and better should not have come. This is a very common problem: Somebody has 5.000 tubes of a low selling tube, and he sees them go on Ebay for let's say 15$ one. So he wants to sell them in quantities of 100. He wants 1200$ for a 100pcs box. Or, for you to get an attractive price you need to buy them per 5.000, and then you get a box for 1000$. But hey.... that is 50.000$. What a deal is that? This is a bad deal on a good product. I doubt they payed more than 500$ themself for the whole lot. Tubes that nobody wants, have 30 cents value only, or you can even ask money to take them away and clear the stock room. Then while selling them, you can ask what you want for a single piece, like 1$, 5$, 10$, it doesn't matter. Just not for 5000 pieces. Nobody can sell unusual types in quantities of thousands of pieces. Markets will saturate quickly, and you get stuck with it. So selling to dealers is the only possible way to get rid of a large bulk of unwanted tubes. I was really amazed they think I travel all the way to Switserland, to get such a silly offer. Then they tried it another way. Ok, they said, so you want audiophile tubes. Please read this better. They showed me shelves full of NOS tubes, all of the rarest kind, like Philips GZ34, and Telefunken ECC801S in sealed boxes of 100, nicely sorted. I could not buy singles tubes. I had to buy them always in 100 pcs boxes. All cartons with colored logos on the outside boxes. Like coming out of a time machine. This was an NOS tubes supermarket. This was too weird to see. I was standing there like.... huh?... this can't be.... After carefull asking where all those NOS tubes came from, I was explained this was all left from the old days. The business founder had now died, I was explained by his son. At this time he was running the business with his mother. He explained to me, how it came that way. His father had a official agreement with some Television manufacturers, to supply them with Telefunken tubes. Even Telefunken themself. Tubes for TV's was big business. They bought the tubes from Telefunken directly, and stocked them in Switzerland. Then, TV factories sometimes ordered large quantities of one type, and this was a bottleneck of TV production. Suddenly too many tubes of a particular type were needed, and production of TV's would had difficulties when just one tube type missing. So their business model was to build up a buffer inventory in Switzerland, to keep Telefunken out of supply problems. Reason for this being in Switzerland, as his son told me, "everything is legally possible here". Taxes had to do with a legal conctruction with Panama, but he didn't want to say much about this. Anyway, he assured me it worked good and very profitable for his father. However with this Telefunken buffer stock in place, still occasionally there was supply problem for TV production. To solve also this problem, they had a licence agreement with Telefunken for special cases, and now here it comes: This licence agreement allowed them to re brand non Telefunken tubes as Telefunken. Typically these were East European tubes, mostly RFT. This was all legal (at that time), and after I said I do not believe it, I was shown myself the 50 years old books and documents, and yes it was all in there. They still had a huge pile of original NOS boxes they showed me, and Telefunken brand stamping tools and machines. I even have pictures of that. So how all those shelves came full of tubes...? You can help me guessing. I was there in the year 2003. Then about 10 years later, I was offered what they say way a whole "wall" of tube boxes for sale, of all possible brands. So this work was done on a massive scale.
Follow @emissionlabs © COPYRIGHT NOTICE All Rights Reserved

Follow @emissionlabs
© COPYRIGHT NOTICE All Rights Reserved

Tube Faking
The Swiss Connection
(Last updated: 24-Jan-2016 14:49 )

Case1) Grande business. In 2003, I visited a company in Switzerland, who has access to real (NOS) tube printing tools (for the glass) and tons of NOS boxes. I was there initially to check their NOS offerings, but we could not agree on anything. They had this attitude, like they have so many millions Audiophile tubes for sale, and they are the greatest. When I got there, they wanted prices same as on Ebay, and when I offered a price below that, they reacted like I wasted their time, and better should not have come. This is a very common problem: Somebody has 5.000 tubes of a low selling tube, and he sees them go on Ebay for let's say 15$ one. So he wants to sell them in quantities of 100. He wants 1200$ for a 100pcs box. Or, for you to get an attractive price you need to buy them per 5.000, and then you get a box for 1000$. But hey.... that is 50.000$. What a deal is that? This is a bad deal on a good product. I doubt they payed more than 500$ themself for the whole lot. Tubes that nobody wants, have 30 cents value only, or you can even ask money to take them away and clear the stock room. Then while selling them, you can ask what you want for a single piece, like 1$, 5$, 10$, it doesn't matter. Just not for 5000 pieces. Nobody can sell unusual types in quantities of thousands of pieces. Markets will saturate quickly, and you get stuck with it. So selling to dealers is the only possible way to get rid of a large bulk of unwanted tubes. I was really amazed they think I travel all the way to Switserland, to get such a silly offer. Then they tried it another way. Ok, they said, so you want audiophile tubes. Please read this better. They showed me shelves full of NOS tubes, all of the rarest kind, like Philips GZ34, and Telefunken ECC801S in sealed boxes of 100, nicely sorted. I could not buy singles tubes. I had to buy them always in 100 pcs boxes. All cartons with colored logos on the outside boxes. Like coming out of a time machine. This was an NOS tubes supermarket. This was too weird to see. I was standing there like.... huh?... this can't be.... After carefull asking where all those NOS tubes came from, I was explained this was all left from the old days. The business founder had now died, I was explained by his son. At this time he was running the business with his mother. He explained to me, how it came that way. His father had a official agreement with some Television manufacturers, to supply them with Telefunken tubes. Even Telefunken themself. Tubes for TV's was big business. They bought the tubes from Telefunken directly, and stocked them in Switzerland. Then, TV factories sometimes ordered large quantities of one type, and this was a bottleneck of TV production. Suddenly too many tubes of a particular type were needed, and production of TV's would had difficulties when just one tube type missing. So their business model was to build up a buffer inventory in Switzerland, to keep Telefunken out of supply problems. Reason for this being in Switzerland, as his son told me, "everything is legally possible here". Taxes had to do with a legal conctruction with Panama, but he didn't want to say much about this. Anyway, he assured me it worked good and very profitable for his father. However with this Telefunken buffer stock in place, still occasionally there was supply problem for TV production. To solve also this problem, they had a licence agreement with Telefunken for special cases, and now here it comes: This licence agreement allowed them to re brand non Telefunken tubes as Telefunken. Typically these were East European tubes, mostly RFT. This was all legal (at that time), and after I said I do not believe it, I was shown myself the 50 years old books and documents, and yes it was all in there. They still had a huge pile of original NOS boxes they showed me, and Telefunken brand stamping tools and machines. I even have pictures of that. So how all those shelves came full of tubes...? You can help me guessing. I was there in the year 2003. Then about 10 years later, I was offered what they say way a whole "wall" of tube boxes for sale, of all possible brands. So this work was done on a massive scale.