Italian Tubes

[ritchie]

Searching for a pair of 6CG7 and found these on ebay. They look great, especially the boxes. Do Italian tubes sound that much better than those made elsewhere? Are they really worth the asking price? Or are you just paying for the rarity and the packaging?

 

[FlaCharlie]

The major dealers sell NOS 6CG7s for $8.

 

[Lavane]

Tubo Electronico!

 

[Mamrak1]

The 6CG7 tubes I saw online run from an average of $18 to $40 each. I hope you weren’t contemplating spending $750 for a pair Marconi Italianas?

 

[ritchie]

I hope you weren’t contemplating spending $750 for a pair Marconi Italianas?

I mean, if I pass this up, I might never know what I'm missing

 

[tonyg88]

I wanna play my Connie Francis Italian album on them

 

[604man]

I like Italian lemonade.

I had an Italian GF and we were always fighting.....

 

[ritchie]

I wanna play my Connie Francis Italian album on them

Listening to these Connie Francis albums now, ty for the suggestion

 

[sKiZo]

mama mia that's some spicy tube prices!

Pretty sure you'd just be paying a premium price for the boxes. Marconi Italy was mostly an importer/rebrander by that time?

Seems to me British Marconi did a lot of that, especially during WW2, getting around a lot of that national pride BS so they could sell to all takers. I've got some Marconi Canada tubes here, and those were made by GE.

 

[Brice]

Agreed. Marconi Canada were indeed GE... Still very good tubes, but not worth that amount of money.
I've tried many, and they are pretty much all good, regardless of the brand and plates. That's the funny thing with the 6CG7.

 

[gadget73]

Those honestly look like RCA tubes to me.

 

[Lavane]

mama mia that's some spicy tube prices!

Pretty sure you'd just be paying a premium price for the boxes. Marconi Italy was mostly an importer/rebrander by that time?

Seems to me British Marconi did a lot of that, especially during WW2, getting around a lot of that national pride BS so they could sell to all takers. I've got some Marconi Canada tubes here, and those were made by GE.

I've seen Marconi 6L6's priced crazy high. But still, " Tubo Electronica"!!!!

 

[sKiZo]

tubbo electronica?

 

[ritchie]

Down the rabbit hole, I found this page recounting the history of tubes in Italy: https://www.radiomuseum.org/forum/an_overview_of_italian_vacuum_tube_manufacturers.html

 

[ritchie]

Those honestly look like RCA tubes to me.

From the above on the back of what looks like the same Marconi box, we can see the RCA logo:

 

[Mamrak1]

I mean, if I pass this up, I might never know what I'm missing

I know what you will be missing. $750.

 

[leftside]

That particular seller likes to add an extra 0 to their prices. I guess someone is buying...

I'm a big fan of Italian Fivre tubes.

 

[Mamrak1]

Just promise us one thing. If you buy those $750 tubes, you won’t be posting here how they aren’t any better than a $40 pair you could have gotten on the cheap.

 

[ritchie]

I'm a big fan of Italian Fivre tubes.

These FIVRE 6CG7 on eBay are a relative bargain at $550 for the set of five:

 

[FlaCharlie]

Just promise us one thing. If you buy those $750 tubes, you won’t be posting here how they aren’t any better than a $40 pair you could have gotten on the cheap.

$40 is cheap? Again, assuming they have them in stock, $16 a pair at the big dealers.

Both of these guys have huge warehouses with millions of tubes.

https://vacuumtubes.net/prices.htm
http://www.esrcvacuumtubes.com