Saturday, October 2, 2010

Market

What tubes should we consider rebuilding? What do you the the market might be - number of tubes per year. How much do you think that collectors would be willing to pay for tubes?

10 comments:

  1. I would say that we should rebuild both metal and glass. Both color and B&W. Stick to round tubes mostly.

    I think if we can get a reliable supply of guns, 10bp4's and 12lp4's will be very popular if we can keep the costs reasonable.

    21axp22's that are under vacuum will also be popular as they are getting harder and harder to find.

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  2. The demand for rebuilds will be dependant on the price. Some collectors are real cheap. Many collectors would rather have a crapy tube in their set than pay $100 for a rebuild. I don't think we should shoot for the bargain basement market.

    I think there will be plenty of demand in the $100 to $125 range for a glass, B&W crt. At that price point I think we will have all we can do to keep up with the demand, considering this will be a part time opperation.

    Color crt's priced in the range of $200 will also be popular.

    Metal tubes will need to incurr an upcharge for running the 6 hour oven cycle. Perhaps an additional 25%.

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  3. And then there is the issue of what the customer will expect of us...........

    There will no doubt be failures. Tubes break. We can't be expected to compensate customers if we damage a tube and it becomes a loss. Shit happens, customers will need to know this going in. On the other hand I don't think we need to charge the customer for our mistakes either. IF we fail to perform, the customer should not be expected to cover our loss of time and materials.

    Customer pays for all shipping expenses.

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  4. Scotty was pretty clear about that. You pay either way.

    If you drop the CRT on the floor, that's pretty clear who's at fault. But other things will happen where it's not clear what the cause was. If you don't charge the customer for time and materials, then you need to charge everyone a little more so that ETF doesn't operate at a loss.

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  5. I'm sure I'll have some 10BP4s, 10FP4s and 12LP4s to rebuild.

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  6. 21" round color tubes, without a doubt. They are getting harder and harder to find, and I know you guys have a bunch of guns for those tubes. :p

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  7. I think more research needs taken into saving the old guns and just "re-cathoding" it. Why? your gonna run out of guns eventually.

    keep this in mind.

    Also projection CRTs i would like to get added into the list. lots of enthusiasts in the barco, sony, marquee, zenith, etc etc projectors, tubes are getting scarce, ever so slowly.

    ---mbates14

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  8. Speaking of rare tubes, what about 7JP4, and, 3KP4 tubes? I think these should be rebuilt for a reasonable cost. True, not likely to find entire guns. How about re cathoding, and, repair any shorts?
    Cost, I'd say 125-150 would be reasonable.These tubes are getting more scarce.
    Bill Cahill

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  9. I think we should be able to rebuild CRT's from the tube era. Predicta tubes will be popular, as well as the 110 degree ones.

    As for color, definitely the round tubes, but some rectangulars should be available.

    Until enough of us can get proficient, I would start with glass round BW, work our way to rectangular BW, then go for color.

    I do have a dud 12LP4, 17BP4 and three 21FJP22's that I can practice on.

    As for 7JP4 and other electrostatics, we should try these along with the 10B, etc. Since there a lot of dud 7j's out there, this is one we need to get right.

    I'll keep up and see what services I can volunteer.

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  10. Well if you wanted to practice, you could get commonly available junk B&W CRTs to practice on, to get the technique down.

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