The future of Tubes

This question has been thoroughly addressed in several threads that exist in the archives.

It's too bad Audiogon does not have a better search engine.

Low demand is a factor(so many now are willing to settle for the mediocre), but the desire/motivation to produce a quality product is another. Anything of quality is going to cost you through the nose nowdays, and few take the time or make the effort to turn out excellence. There are quality tubes manufactured that compare with the NOS "Grails", but they cost. ie: (http://thetubestore.com/eat.html) (http://www.elusivedisc.com/products.asp?dept=1469) (http://www.tubedepot.com/we-300b.html) Click on "tubes" on this site: (http://www.kraudio.com/)

I think that the low demand for tubes today makes it economically unattractive for manufacturers to spend the money to develop tubes as good as the great NOS preamp tubes.

It still could happen though. I imagine there are folks in Russia and China working on it and they could come up with the magic formula.

Current production Gold Lion KT 88 output tubes are considered to sound better than many NOS tubes. Also there are people who prefer current production preamp tubes to NOS.

I suspected low demand was the cause. Thanks both of you for the clarification (and links)..

New Old Stock (NOS) tubes were built for quality, durability, and reliability. Not only used in audio equipment but in numerous industrial applications which required a zero-tolerance for failure. For example, both the US and Russian space ventures at the time required the use of tubes for computers, communications, navigation, and rocketry. The first computer-guided missile systems were all tube-based circuitry. The entire nation, civilian and military, relied on tubes that far surpassed the quality of modern production tubes. That legacy is the stuff that NOS tubes provide. An affordable modern equivalent of the same build quality is probably only possible in Asia with their lower production costs and still the retail consumer price would be equal to or greater than those expensive NOS tubes we crave. We are indeed fortunate to have a substantial quantity of NOS tubes to rely on for our audio equipment.