Why do I bother: Trying to buy Tubes

[traynor_garnet]

I'm looking for a pair of 6L6s so I call the big three places in Edmonton. Everyone of them sells the same stuff: Groove Tubes (aka rip off tubes), EH, Sovtek, and Mesa. Not one carries JJ or SED (Winged 'C'').

Argh, I don't know why I even bother with local places. I know their argument would be, "we can't carry everything" but why would you carry the exact same thing as your competitors??

Rant over. Hoping my tech has something good or I will just use the tubestore.ca


TG

[mhammer]

Argh, I don't know why I even bother with local places. I know their argument would be, "we can't carry everything" but why would you carry the exact same thing as your competitors??
I think there is a simple answer to your question. If one was interested in a particular brand of tubes, you'd order from a specialty place. If you were simply interested in getting your amp back into operation, you'd pop into the local place and buy whatever they had that was of sufficient quality. Whether you like Groove Tubes or not, they ARE of sufficient quality, and suppliers can get them. In other places, one may have a "choice" of Sovtek and nothing more. Same principles apply. Dealers will carry inventory that turns over, plain and simple, and the lion's share of tube purchasers will simply want something decent at a decent price that fits the bill and gets their amp working.

Trust me, there are vast segments of this great land who only have direct immediate access to a very limited range of tubes, and only a very few places where a regular person can pop over to the other side of town and have their choice of tube brands. In that sense, there is nothing particularly special about Edmonton that isn't also true of Ottawa, Halifax, Regina, St. John's, and a great many other places. Do folks in Minneapolis or Buffalo have a big choice of tubes locally? I doubt it.

Having briefly visited The Tube Store, I might also point out that these specialty places are not exactly huge thriving industries, even though they serve large chunks of the specialty market. If The Tube Store is the size of your local convenience store (and half of it is empty space so folks can move around without bumping into each other), exactly how many of these places would you expect to see in the whole country, and how sustainable would they be if there were more of them? Conversely, with the prices and service these places offer, exactly how much incentive is there for places like L & M or Mother's Music to stock a bigger selection of tubes?

It's like that for everything. Once upon a time radio Shack (AKA The Source) carried a respectable inventory of components and interesting chips. Once the national and specialty web-based retailers started offering fast shipping, easy catalog search, and great selection, there was simply no good economic argument for the neighbourhood Radio Shack to carry components any more, or to carry much of a selection in what they had.

[Metal#J#]

I'm not a big fan of Groove Tubes either. I have 2 of the same combo (running a stereo set-up), both with the exact speakers and preamp tubes. Amp A has a matched quad of Svetlana el34's and amp B has Groove Tubes. I've been rocking the Svetlana's for over a year and they still sound better than the new Groove Tubes in amp B. With the same eq settings the Svets sound open with a nice mid range spank........The GTs sound reserved and seem to loose presence/definition when pushed.

I also had a problem finding a local store that sold anything but the brands you had mentioned. Same deal with preamp tubes. Finally I called the manufacturer to see what they would have originally shipped the amp with. They hooked me up with a matched quad of Ruby el34s, a matched quad of Mullard re-issue el34s and an assortment of Chinese and Russian preamp tubes at a huge discount. In this case it was a benifit to look around but I've been hosed with dead tubes, outragous duty/tax and back-order issues when buying on-line in the past. :frown:

Good luck with your search:smilie_flagge17:

J

[Ripper]

Hey Steve,
I'll take a look I might have a set of SED's kicking around. I'll take a look round. Shugang are starting to make a pretty good tube now too as are some of the Ruby power tubes. I buy alot of my stuff off of ebay stores. I find I get better pricing and there are alot more choices than anything I can get near me.

[Geek]

Another reason is profit margin.

My wholesaler carries =C= and JJ, but I might get 4% at best to be competitive with the USA. Groove Tubes have like a 50% margin and the others 20-30%.

I still won't use the GT's though :wink:

Cheers!

[Budda]

i just JJ'd the JSX from www.eurotubes.com - arrived fast and intact, and i was a happy camper!

[Wild Bill]

I'm looking for a pair of 6L6s so I call the big three places in Edmonton. Everyone of them sells the same stuff: Groove Tubes (aka rip off tubes), EH, Sovtek, and Mesa. Not one carries JJ or SED (Winged 'C'').

Argh, I don't know why I even bother with local places. I know their argument would be, "we can't carry everything" but why would you carry the exact same thing as your competitors??

Rant over. Hoping my tech has something good or I will just use the tubestore.ca


TG

Every one of the brands you mentioned in the local music stores are brands that I believe come from the same distribution chain as their normal guitar and amp inventory.

JJ's. SED and the like only sell through bona fide tube stores, at least to my limited knowledge.

These latter tube companies would not be interested in sellling directly through Butthump Music, in Butthump, Ontario. They might sell maybe a dozen tubes in a year! If Butthump music is selling Boogies, strings, mic stands and other stuff all from one distribution source that source might well also supply some of the cheaper brands of tubes.

Incidently, I wouldn't include EH in the list of cheap crap. I use them as my standard stock and am well pleased, especially with their 12AX7's and particularly the 6CA7EH's in old Traynors and Garnets!:smile:

:food-smiley-004:

[Ripper]

Incidently, I wouldn't include EH in the list of cheap crap. I use them as my standard stock and am well pleased, especially with their 12AX7's and particularly the 6CA7EH's in old Traynors and Garnets!:smile:

:food-smiley-004:

I like the EH too. I use the Fat Bottle 6CA7's in my Garnets and love the sound.

[Archer]

I'm looking for a pair of 6L6s so I call the big three places in Edmonton. Everyone of them sells the same stuff: Groove Tubes (aka rip off tubes), EH, Sovtek, and Mesa. Not one carries JJ or SED (Winged 'C'').

Argh, I don't know why I even bother with local places. I know their argument would be, "we can't carry everything" but why would you carry the exact same thing as your competitors??

Rant over. Hoping my tech has something good or I will just use the tubestore.ca


TG


Groove tubes sells JJ 6L6 tubes. They name then 6L6S.

I believe they also marked relabeled Winged C tubes though the GT name escapes me right now.

[gtrguy]

The EH are decent as are the GT 6L6GE... supposedly made on the original GE tooling, these really sound good in my blackface Fender amps...

[Gene Machine]

http://thetubestore.com

Canadian business, in Hamilton. Great selection, great shipping.

the can sell you tung sols, whichh i had in my old traynor. WOWZERS it was nice.

g.

[traynor_garnet]

Some interesting points, thanks for all the comments.

Yes, I can understand why a local business simply cannot stock every tube variant known to humanity. My point was simply why would every place in town stock the same stuff? I realize that no local place can really compete with an online "tube only store", but why on earth would every place in town go thru the same distributer and stock the same stuff?!

Honestly, I think this is simply a case of the growing redundancy of local shops; sure in a pinch if you need a tube of any specific type, you can find one, but if you want a particular tube (type and brand) you are SOL.

I guess I'm not questioning the economic logic, but lamenting the fact that in a city of a million people there are basically no options.

TG

[Wild Bill]

Some interesting points, thanks for all the comments.

Yes, I can understand why a local business simply cannot stock every tube variant known to humanity. My point was simply why would every place in town stock the same stuff? I realize that no local place can really compete with an online "tube only store", but why on earth would every place in town go thru the same distributer and stock the same stuff?!

Honestly, I think this is simply a case of the growing redundancy of local shops; sure in a pinch if you need a tube of any specific type, you can find one, but if you want a particular tube (type and brand) you are SOL.

I guess I'm not questioning the economic logic, but lamenting the fact that in a city of a million people there are basically no options.

TG

Local music stores are not known for their techie prowess. Sometimes you get lucky with a knowledgeable guy. I won $10 on a lottery ticket once, too. So they likely have no idea what's a good tube. Besides, as I said before, how many good ones would they likely sell compared to the easy-to-get stuff?

It also has to do with profit margin. Stores that direct market themselves usually give only a small "trade" discount, if any! Mesa tubes probably give a much bigger discount to Mesa dealers. So the music store makes a lot more profit selling Mesa tubes.

A million people? TG, you think tubeheads have it bad? Try being a tech! I'd be surprised if you have even one decent electronics store to go to for parts. Industrial stores swung more and more away from counter business back in the 80's! Not surprising when you consider that a counter might turn only 1% of the business that an order desk geared to industry would sell. What's more, that counter retail customer likely would need a lot more time for every sale of even a few dollars.

So almost all of them dried up in even the larger towns. The bigger ones deal mostly with manufacturers that buy in quantity and pay on an account basis. They don't even have a mechanism to take cash for a sale!

So if you need a small quantity of parts to repair something you're left with the American catalogue distis like DigiKey or ElectroSonic, based in Toronto. You research part numbers for yourself and order by phone or internet and wait for a courier to deliver.

Worse yet, modern industrial parts are geared to the solid state world. Caps with specs useful for tubes and pots with audio tapers are such low volume that most industrial distis don't bother carrying them or treat them as special orders. Can't blame them. To them the losses from what falls on the floor in the warehouse are larger than the sales volume for tubehead parts.

Thank heavens for the internet! It's given us online niche market vendors that cater to tubehead needs. thetubestore.com, Antique Electronics and others can make a good living with selling our kind of parts to literally the whole world. Maybe they would only sell a few good tubes in Butthump but over all of North America or even the entire globe the sales volume is more than adequate.

I understand your frustration but it's sometimes hard as a customer to appreciate that it doesn't matter to some markets if there's a million people in a town. What matters is if there's enough of those people who buy YOUR products!

Every body buys toilet paper. Not nearly as many buy an amplifier. Far fewer buy a capacitor.

I faced this problem when I set up my repair/build business. How do I advertise? The local paper? They charge a fortune! How many musicians would see and respond to my ad? The same with radio and tv. Not very cost-effective. I would have needed years of repairs just to pay for such advertising.

One business mentor suggested blanketing neighbourhoods with flyers in mailboxes. Again, for the cost of such a shotgun approach how many potential customers would I hit?

It's just the way the world works and I've long since stopped feeling frustrated over it. No point in trying to be a rock against the waves. You just get worn down!

Much better to be a surf board!:smile:

:food-smiley-004:

[nonreverb]

Well I can tell you from experience...if you think the tube amp biz. is bad, try finding parts and tubes for Hammond organs and Leslies!! Fortunately I have amassed a large enough inventory so that I can cover most common problems relating to them....However, regarding tube amps...tubes can be a problem. So few manufacturers and distributers...here's my opinion on the subject: Groove tubes is merely a 2nd party vendor to most major manufacturers...and yes they distribute JJ (6L6S, EL34S) BUT at greatly inflated prices. If you're in a bind, are willing to spend the money and you know the suffix code they use you'll get what you want....provided the retailer carries all the variations. Mesa...at one time...carried a variety of different types of one tube ie. for the 6L6 they had the STR415 (US) back in the day now they have the STR430 and STR440. The STR 440 is a Chinese tube...a far cry from it's earlier offering. TAD, RUBY and others I can't comment on since I don't use them but I suspect that their offerings are similar...

Once upon a time the Canadian distributer for JJ was right here in Ottawa!! It was a wonderful thing. When he stopped I seriously considered continuing where he left off but realised that the market just wasn't good enough for me to take on the inventory..so now I get my stock from the US -sigh-

Unfortunately, part of the problem for us in Canada is just that....we're in Canada. We don't have the population to justify stores carrying everything and the distances between places makes the costs high or uneconomical.

[Ripper]

It's kinda nice out here in the boonies as I still get great finds on NOS tubes in old tv repair shops etc. I went to an auction locally a year ago, bought an old bogen pa amp that used to be in a rink, and got a box of "spare" tubes with it all for $5. The spares were 4 old brand new RCA 6L6gc and 8 brand new GE 12ax7s. The amp had a pair of old Tung Sol 5881s in it that still test strong.

[traynor_garnet]

I'll give you $5 for a pair of those RCA 6L6s; that way you make your money back! :)

TG


It's kinda nice out here in the boonies as I still get great finds on NOS tubes in old tv repair shops etc. I went to an auction locally a year ago, bought an old bogen pa amp that used to be in a rink, and got a box of "spare" tubes with it all for $5. The spares were 4 old brand new RCA 6L6gc and 8 brand new GE 12ax7s. The amp had a pair of old Tung Sol 5881s in it that still test strong.