“LGM-118A Peacekeeper missile system being tested at the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
This is a time-lapse photo showing the paths of the multiple re-entry vehicles deployed by the missle. One Peacekeeper can hold up to 10 nuclear warheads, each independently targeted. Were the warheads armed with a nuclear payload, each would carry with it the explosive power of twenty-five Hiroshima-sized weapons.”
It may read like a page out of a classic corporate crime thriller, but the threat is real. ExpoPul, a company whose factory in Saratov, Russia manufactures vacuum tubes under the brand names Sovtek, Electro-Harmonix, Tungsol, Svetlana, Mullard, and others—tubes that include the 6H30 “super tube”—is threatened by one of the many Russian corporate “raiders” who are increasingly stealing businesses from their rightful owners. If the threatened hostile takeover proves successful, two-thirds of the world’s supply of vacuum tubes—tubes vital to the sound of audiophile gear and instruments from such well-known companies as McIntosh, Audio Research, BAT, Jadis, Fender, KORG, Peavey, Vox, Soldano, Carvin, Ampeg, and Crane—could become a thing of the past.
Apart from the fact that if the Sovtek factory is shut down we are all screwed in a practical sense, you really should read at least one of the articles because this is just the beginning. There was a good one in the NYT but its behind the wall now. The company is baised in Samara. The ‘corporate raiders’ physically raid businesses. There’s also a bizarre white-color angle to the crimes. It’s endemic to modern Russia. The sovtek factory was basically supported as the tube industry died by the russian military-space complex and is one of the only operating cold war artifact factories in russia. The company is owned by the guy who invented some famous pedals like the Big Muff and who had something to do with Hendrix. I mean, really, you have to basically read the article.
Ry, you should by some of this stuff and add it to your amp wall.
I can’t tell if this is audio equipment or actual WWII era military technology.
Interestingly I spent a couple hours the other night playing a global thermonuclear war simulator.