Mic Kaczmarczik's TubeInformation - The Blue Guitar

From postmaster@triodeel.com Sat Nov 7 18:47:24 CST 1998
Article: 137636 of alt.guitar.amps
Path: geraldo.cc.utexas.edu!cs.utexas.edu!howland.erols.net!novia!sequencer.newscene.com!not-for-mail
From: postmaster@triodeel.com (Ned Carlson)
Newsgroups: alt.guitar.amps
Subject: Re: Help ! 6V6 tube question
Date: 7 Nov 1998 14:26:05 -0600
Organization: Triode Electronics
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On Sat, 7 Nov 1998 09:22:13 -0500, "Steve Watson"
wrote:
>I always thought that tube relabelers had to put the country of origin on
>the tube. Is this not true?
>Steve
This was the convention that was adopted by US Customs for tube
importers, in lieu of labelling the box with the country of origin
(which the Canadians used to do with all their tubes), the tube
companies had the tubes labelled with country of origin
in the originating country, then the boxes said "Country
Of Origin as Stated On Tube".
Customs was much more diligent about checking this back when
there was a 35% punitive duty on most products from Communist
countries, because goods were frequently mislabelled to avoid the
duty, and some, including Richardson, who labelled the fake
"English 6V6-GTA", got in a peck 'o trouble for that.
(I myself had tubes impounded by customs because the vendor
had failed to label them properly, then I had to put up a
bond to get 'em out, then had to have Customs reinspect them
after I'd paid to have them labelled myself)
This problem was exacaberated by the fact that EC (Common Market)
countries normally don't require the country of origin labellling, and
people were importing unlabelled Eastern bloc tubes intended for sale
there,such as the Yugoslav and East German product that
Siemens & Telefunken were marketing.
Nowadays Customs seems more concerned with industrial & transmitter
tubes of the same types as US companies like Eimac make,
that might be imported, fake labelled and passed off as
US product. Small tubes don't seem to be a priority, so long as
importers aren't trying to pass them off as something they're not.
They're also quite diligent about trying to prevent illegal export of
items like krytrons and ignitrons, which might be used in
weapons systems. A lot of high-tech vacuum technology is export
restricted.
The problem with the 6V6's, is that there's still likely thousands
of Russian ones from the bad old days floating around with fake
country of origin labelling. Since there's a plethora of real NOS
on the market, the new Sovtek ones are etched in the glass
"Sovtek 6V6-GT Made In Russia", and Russian tubes are charged
the same duty rate as tubes from other countries,it's unlikely that
many people nowadays are fake labelling Russian 6V6's.
You are much more likely to run across fake labelled
product if you are trying to purchase rare European NOS
product, eg: like the famous (or infamous) Amperex "Bugle
Boy" or Telefunken 12AX7's & EL84's, due to the elevated
prices on those products, some folks have been rumored to
be fake labelling stuff like Hungarian and Yugoslav product
with those marques. As I mentioned before, Siemens and