Tubes Asylum: Re: be careful by Uncle Ned

"Amperex EL34 quad - well, I guess he got nervous about this one cause real quads go for huge $$. He admits they are probably Chinese. But again, his stock of reprinted Amperex boxes goes with them.
Mullard GZ37 - this one's real dangerous. They are clearly
substandard Chinese production and may not be real GZ37's at all. The
Chinese version is very unreliable and actually can't handle the same current as the real Mullards. The unfortunate victim of this purchase may get a very nasty and dangerous surprise.
Amperex 5751 - print on the tubes is obviously not known Amperex
labelling, boxes are reprints.
Amperex 5AR4 - same story as the 5751, and again, this might be a
dangerous beastie for the buyer."

The Amperex and Mullard brand names are both owned by
Richardson Electronics, Ltd. They've plastered those
brand names on all sorts of stuff that never got close
to a European factory, and still do with Amperex( go to
http://catalog.rell.com and search on Amperex).
Yes, this may seem outrageous to some folks, but
the name is legally their property and they're
entitled to use it to label tubes as they like.
That's undoubtedly where some of these "Amperex"
tubes he's selling came from (tho those 5751 don't look like
they're stamped any way I've ever seen Richardson do it,
but who knows). Philips (the people who used to own
Amperex) isn't exactly guilt-free either,
I've seen Chinese & Russian tubes in factory issue
Philips ECG boxes.
The Amperex boxes Richardson uses are pretty easy to detect,
look inside the bottom flap you'll see a "K P Co."
circular trademark. Since Richardson owns the box dies
and screens(ie: no one else could go to K P Co. and have the
same box made) and getting custom boxes made is a fairly
expensive propostion, one can be fairly confident that
boxes with the K P Co. mark came from Richardson.

OTOH...
Looking at the GE 12AT7/6201's the guy is selling,
the tubes are labelled "JG-12AT7WA", which indicates they
ought to be in *military* boxes, not commercial (aka "jobber")
ones. And the numbers on the end of the box are in a
different typeface than GE normally used on their tube boxes.
AAMOF, I've got a JG-12AT7WA GE here, it's in a white
mil box, with a datecode on the outside as well as on the tube.

In all fairness, the GZ37's do indeed look like the
real thing, tho.

Triode Electronics