Reshoring Vacuum Tube Manufacturing, One Tube at a Time

For most of us, vacuum tubes haven’t appeared in any of our schematics or BOMs in — well, ever. Once mass-manufacturing made reliable transistors cheap enough for hobbyists, vacuum tubes became pretty passe, and it wasn’t long before the once mighty US tube industry was decimated, leaving the few remaining tube enthusiasts to ferret out caches of old stock, or even seek new tubes from overseas manufacturers.

However, all that may change if [Charles Whitener] succeeds in reshoring at least part of the US vacuum tube manufacturing base. He seems to have made a good start, having purchased the Western Electric brand from AT&T and some of its remaining vacuum tube manufacturing equipment back in 1995. Since then, he has been on a talent hunt, locating as many people as possible who have experience in the tube business to help him gear back up.

The new Western Electric, now located in Rossville, Georgia, is currently manufacturing 300B power triodes and marketing them as a premium product aimed primarily at the audiophile market. A matched pair of tubes in a cherry wood presentation case will set you back about $1,500, so they’re not for everyone. But it seems like the company is using the premium tubes to bankroll the production of more mainstream tubes, like the 12AX7 dual triode that’s expected to launch this summer, along with a host of other tubes. These will all be aimed at a much broader market: professional audio gear and guitar amps, which have long coveted the sound that they swear only tubes can provide.

It’s good to see someone putting effort into rebuilding an industry, even if it is for most purposes an obsolete one. It reminds us a bit of [Dalibor Farney]’s Nixie tube factory, and that’s a good thing.