Watching Tubes

When I’m not spending my money on audio equipment and music, I like to collect wristwatches. I’ve always had a thing for watches, but my tastes and my disposable income took a while to meet up. As a result, it’s only in the last few years that I’ve really gotten into timepieces, and tried to learn all I can about Swiss mechanical watches in particular. The world of watches is fascinating to . . . watch, not least because mid- and high-end watches are very big business. What’s even more interesting to me are the often parallel paths that watchmaking and audio have taken over the years.

In the 1970s, the vacuum-tube and mechanical-watch industries were in deep trouble for precisely the same reason: the rise of the cheap transistor. The transistor made possible powerful amplification, miniaturization, and cheap audio electronics, which led consumers to abandon tubes as if they were leisure suits. In Switzerland, the 1970s and early ’80s are known as the period of "the Quartz Crisis." Mechanical Swiss watches had ruled the roost for two centuries and in 1970 commanded 90% of the world market, but the advent of cheap, accurate, reliable, transistorized quartz watches from Japan plunged the Swiss industry -- which had invented the quartz technology in the first place -- into the deepest crisis in its history.

But here the paths taken by Swiss watchmakers and the U.S. and Western European producers of vacuum tubes diverge: one led to prosperity, the other to the grave.

As all tube lovers know, the giant tube makers of the West -- G.E., Sylvania, Philips, Siemens, and others -- simply stopped making tubes. Some designs used by the military continued to be produced in small numbers, but fabled models such as the Western Electric 300B and the Genelex KT88 simply disappeared from the market. For a while, a large surplus of tubes was still available that could be had for a pittance -- although tubes were headed for scarcity, few people wanted them. Most of the audiophiles who today are enthralled with tube sound would give almost anything to go back in time and snatch up every Tung Sol 6550 they could lay hands on, and wonder what they were thinking to not have cornered the market in Amperex ECC83s.

In the dawning era of the Compact Disc, the vacuum tube was a throwback, an obsolete technology that had no place in the digital age. It wasn’t that tubes were sonically inferior to 1980s-era transistors -- the truth is more likely the reverse -- they just had an image problem. What was unfortunate for the audio-tube community was that the same companies that made the glass bottles often also made transistors, and so felt no need to revitalize a dying market. Outside the Communist bloc, the vacuum tube ceased being a contender; for a time, it seemed that tubes were gone for good.

The Swiss watch industry, however, didn’t just roll over in the face of the transistor onslaught. Instead, Swiss manufacturers circled their wagons, streamlined, and moved far upmarket. It’s hard to imagine it now, but there was a time when a Rolex wasn’t a status symbol, and a Heuer (sans TAG) was just a good, reliable watch, not an accessory worthy of Tiger Woods. And it was a quartz powerhouse, Swatch, that led the rebirth of the Swiss mechanical watch. Swatch’s great success in making inexpensive quartz watches gave it the means to buy up and reinvigorate significant and historic Swiss makers of mechanical watches. Though they’d been on the edge of the abyss in 1981, by 1982 mechanical watchmakers were breathing sighs of relief.

What a difference a decade makes. Although the manufacture of vacuum tubes hasn’t been reborn in the West, the former Communist states of Eastern Europe never stopped making them: their technological "backwardness" has made possible the re-emergence of tubes not just as audio output devices but as high-end audio devices. Lamm, Zandèn, McIntosh, Audio Research, VTL, Audio Note -- the list of companies that have turned tubes into gold goes on and on. For a while, it almost seemed as if it was the transistor that was the dead-end technology; many argued that only tubes could breathe life into supposedly sterile digital recordings.

But as Swiss watches grew more exclusive and expensive, tube-based components got cheaper and cheaper. When tubes had begun their comeback, they, too, returned at the top of their food chain, but it didn’t take long for this era’s version of the quartz watch -- Chinese-made tube electronics -- to come along and push prices way, way down. Often good, sometimes flammable, and almost always inexpensive, these Chinese components brought tubes back to the masses. Just a few years ago, tube amps made in China, built like tanks and finished like Ferraris, seemed to be everywhere and cheap as water. It suddenly became a lot harder to sell a $5000 U.S.-made amp when "the same thing" could be had from China for $1000. But the Chinese didn’t want to troll at the bottom of the market forever.

Chinese brands that once made cheap tubed audio gear are now moving upmarket faster than you can say "trade deficit." Shanling, PrimaLuna, and Grant Audio all have pushed the price envelope with their China-made products -- which, by many accounts, are as good as anything made in North America. Yes, there are still plenty of cheap’n’cheerful Chinese tube products, but the trend toward higher prices for Chinese wares is unmistakable. A few years ago there was no such thing as a $5000 Chinese amplifier; now there are several, and they might just be underpriced.

Only time will tell whether tube-powered audio becomes only a rich man’s game. If the Swiss example is anything to go by, what may be a garden variety today could tomorrow be the tube equivalent of a Patek Philippe, and the two industries might once again follow parallel fates. One area where the watch world is far ahead of audio, however, is in the field of standards, and that’s what I’ll discuss next month.

. . . Colin Smith
editor@goodsound.com