The escalating price of tube audio consoles

[Opcom]

This Altec tube mixer got put to auction and sold for $2500 before I had a chance to get it for a reasonable amount. I was a little astonished at the price it went for but I suppose that is how this stuff is going. I'm not hearing of any small tube consoles for reasonable cost any more. I got to look at it, very clean inside. miniature tubes. Just saying, 10 years ago I could have had an octal Collins console for $200 and should have jumped on it but had no station at the time.

On the other hand a 1929 RCA Theremin in the same event sold for $10K.

[W7TFO]

That was a bargain @ $2500 today.

That particular mixer was directly descended from the Western Electric 25B, selling for $25K+ today.

Dennis

[VE1PYE]

Same with the Price of tubes.  I'm looking for bits for a T1154 Transmitter i'm restoring and the ML6/VT105 Tubes are $160 a pair for ww2 vintage tubes. 
73, Jason VE1PYE

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

Just saying, 10 years ago I could have had an octal Collins console for $200 and should have jumped on it but had no station at the time.

You definitely should've grabbed it. The preamps alone can each bring more than that. 212A mixers were bringing $2K back in 1998, Bs about half that though they went up as well. I originally joined ebay in '98 to bid on a 212A and almost won it, except I hadn't developed good online sniping skills and bid a little too early. Ironically, I ended up buying another from the guy who won it, when I mentioned it to him several years later via ebay message.

Beyond the audiophool tube frenzy and crazy shelf-collector prices, many recording studios still either prefer or offer as an alternative tube gear.

As Dennis says, that Altec wasn't a bad buy in today's world. Think I paid $1500 for my 212A back in 2001 with 2 power supplies and relay control box, plus shipping via Forward Air to Albany from Winston-Salem. And that was a good buy even then.

[flintstone mop]

I regret EVERY piece of tube gear I have owned and figured it was time to let it go. Every piece!!!!
When "VINTAGE" is stamped on the item for sale, the price goes up to stupidity.

[K7KWD]

I have to agree with Todd. I've seen very similar boards go for a LOT more than $2,500. The Western Electric 23 and 25 series boards go for stupid prices--over 10k seems to be the norm. I was pricing WE-23s a few years ago and when I was able to find any, they were always priced in the stratosphere. I finally gave up. Then I was running a web search and found a very nice WE 23-C that had gone in some local auction in Chicago for  $300 or something--FOUR DAYS before I found the auction listing! Yeesh...

I had a longish talk with someone who has a bunch of old broadcast equipment that he sells from time to time. He said a lot of it goes to the Far East. Apparently there's a big market for American nostalgia. Also, recording studios sometimes grab consoles and they often rip the pre-amps out and junk the carcasses. But I'm not sure this happens as much now. There's at least some awareness out there that Sam Phillips used an RCA 76D broadcast console to record all those old Elvis/Jerry Lee Lewis/Carl Perkins/etc. records at Sun Studios.

A few other items now command ridiculous prices: Tube compressor/limiters, especially the RCA models from the 50s; RCA 44 and (to a slightly lesser degree) 77 series ribbon microphones. I see a lot of high price tags on studio turntables from the 30s-50s as well, but I don't know if they're actually selling. There was a pretty funny listing a few years back on everyone's favorite auction site for an RCA BN-2A portable broadcast mixer/amp. Supposedly this unit was from the Vatican and The seller's pitch was that it had processed the vocal signals of several Popes! So it was clearly worth the $25k he was asking.

[KD6VXI]

Check out a UREI bl-40.

In the thousands.   When you can find one.

And then they rip out the phase flipper and other parts,  to get it back to the 'original'  compressor / limiter.

--Shane
KD6VXI

[Opcom]

All may not be lost. A friend says he has a couple of rack mount DuKane or Rauland mike preamp/mixer units. Those brands are not the most snobbish but they are usually of very good quality and free enough of noise for institutional use. Each is said to have a few channels, Octal tubes inside, and gain knobs on the front. They connect together with Jones plugs and take an external power supply.

They are not a console, but there's enough other stuff here to throw in with them to make a console. Hey the hardest part is always the mic-level stuff, due to anti-hum and noise and anti-RF measures - that is pretty much done. I'll post a pic of those mixers when I get them to wrap it up. Anyway the 3cx3000 is on the front burner, all else are on the 200+ back-burners here.

This article showed up, nice to read.

[flintstone mop]

The Vintage Rage continues on. T-368's used to go for $750 from Fair Radio....Wait a few years as the AM mode gets on fire; modify the transmitter to have hi-fi audio and minor TLC and you see the same TX for sale for $2500...