Tubes getting hard to come by?

Why do you even bother posting jjss? 

Why don't folks just place a wanted to buy ad. I'd be surprised if some folks didn't have some used or new tubes they would be happy to sell at a reasonable price. I know I do but I'm to lazy to post an ad to try to sell them. 

The real depletion occurred more than a couple years ago- truly "new" old stock of even common audio tubes is scarce and some of the more desirable old tubes, including rectifiers, are simply not on the market or very recherché. (and you have to know what you are buying). 

The latest crunch doesn't affect me since the gear makers can supply most; and the few tubes I roll-- I'm good and have various back-ups. Truly new old tubes of the never used variety have performed better for me than pulls. 

Good luck, it's a jungle out there! :)

Unfortunately you need to be careful in these times.... just because you are paying premium prices, you aren't always getting premium tubes.   Lot of junk out there right now, especially due to the "purge" ....   by purge I mean all the "NOS" tubes that aren't really NOS.    As much as I hate eBay, I have received some holy grail tubes I could never find locally.   When you deal mostly in tubes and have 10,000 transactions like some of these guys with nearly perfect feedback I will take the chance.

Brent Jessee

Www.tubes.rs

Uncle Kevin

Those are the places I trust with respect to NOS.   

@whart

That’s true about NOS inventory. I noticed about 2 - 3 years ago my favorite dealers were slow to restock premium and popular tubes. That’s when I decided to buy backup pairs of rare and holy grail tubes. I also learned my lesson buying from Ebay, these were not NOS tubes and even with a return policy some vendors would either fight with me or ignore my messages. I finally returned to my go to dealers and waited for inventory to be replenished at a higher price.

Oh yeah, I did find one honest Ebay dealer who states that tubes are new or used and posts test results.