NEW Sensor mullard el84's

[dartanion]

Tubes won't be built in the US for these reasons, however the US Military has pretty much been exempted from most all environmental regulations because of "national security reasons." However, the US military has been buying tubes from Russia and other places since the 80s sometime IIRC.

Yes, there are other things that are toxic to the environment and to people that are allowed in manufacturing all the time. Gov't regulation doesn't always make sense, but economically you'll probably never justify manufacturing vacuum tubes in the US ever again.

[rockinlocken]

I have to agree with most of the comments here. Being from a manufacturing facility for 30+ years and oh yes we are now AS, ISO & BS approved. We can't build and do things the way we used to. And there are also few really good reasons for that too!
Some of the old guy's who are still in the business are 70-80 years old. When their time comes, tons of folklore knowledge will be lost forever until you or I rediscover it (most times by mistake). Just a note, one of those guy's looks at me with total bewilderment everytime we discuss tube amps designed to distort. Yes ,I would really like them to focus on one or two power tube designs and a only few preamp tubes.

[leslie]

Toxicity and enviromental impact?

Yep. Even if the material in the tube itself is 100% safe, the materials and methods used to build them are hazardous. e.g. You could lick a chromed chassis all week with no adverse effects but the tanks of chemicals needed to put the chrome on that chassis are a sequence of nasty witches' brews and the waste from the process is strongly (and expensively) regulated. The processes of coating the innards of a vacuum tube are no less nasty.

Are they gonna stop make alnico because of cobalt envolved?
Nickel?
Aluminium?

Maybe not yet but you won't see anyone new getting into the manufacture of Alnico in the USA.

Well tubes are not more toxical than production of alnico magnets.

You need to look further into that. The truth differs from your assertion..

KennyO

Thanks Kenny for in depth answer.
But as long as you have these (listed) http://www.marad.dot.gov/nmrec/links/usshipyardsr.html
and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clutch
you'll have all above you listed(nasty witches' brews).


Witchy engineer