Hey everyone! As a lover of all things vacuum tube myself, I know a lot of people here will really benefit from this information as well, and since I deal with this daily as my job I thought it important to give everyone here a heads-up that will be extremely important.
We all collectively lost access to replacement tubes this week for the foreseeable future.
As we're all well aware of the destructive mess currently ongoing in Europe, we guitarists are a niche group directly affected. Save from JJ's, the vast majority of the world's tubes come from Russian factories. Russia sanctioned over 200 exports as a result of this conflict, and amp tubes are one of them. Additionally, China's singular tube factory is more or less MIA currently. That really only leaves JJ's out of Slovakia to now shoulder the demand of the entire vacuum tube market. JJ is going to have an extremely difficult time matching this astronomical demand increase. Some may get lucky with a shipment here or there, and I'm not really one for doom-saying things, but I would not be surprised if the next possible tube change on our amps doesn't happen before 2023.
So, treat your tube amps a bit extra carefully. If you have to play a gig, consider using a modeller and save the good stuff for your playing at home where you don't have to put as much strain on your amp.
We all collectively lost access to replacement tubes this week for the foreseeable future.
As we're all well aware of the destructive mess currently ongoing in Europe, we guitarists are a niche group directly affected. Save from JJ's, the vast majority of the world's tubes come from Russian factories. Russia sanctioned over 200 exports as a result of this conflict, and amp tubes are one of them. Additionally, China's singular tube factory is more or less MIA currently. That really only leaves JJ's out of Slovakia to now shoulder the demand of the entire vacuum tube market. JJ is going to have an extremely difficult time matching this astronomical demand increase. Some may get lucky with a shipment here or there, and I'm not really one for doom-saying things, but I would not be surprised if the next possible tube change on our amps doesn't happen before 2023.
So, treat your tube amps a bit extra carefully. If you have to play a gig, consider using a modeller and save the good stuff for your playing at home where you don't have to put as much strain on your amp.
