Vacuum tubes are still made today, so I'm sure the knowledge is not lost. I'm curious about the answer as well.

NoMoreNicksLeft 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I was under the impression that they were only made in eastern Europe at this point, former bloc nations. Even then, the demand must be microscopic at this point.

▲

musictubes 43 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

They are also made in China. There is also one American company that makes a single audio tube, the 300b. They bought the Western Electric tooling, materials, and trade dress from whoever had bought it from AT&T.

I’m not sure where non audio vacuum tubes are made. I’m sure there’s a variety of companies around the world making X-ray, transmitter, laser, etc. tubes.

▲

drum55 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

xray, photomultiplier and laser tubes are still SOTA. PM tubes in particular have a huge number of glass feed through for the intermediate plate voltages.

▲

SoftTalker 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Musical instrument amplifiers still use them as well, at least some of them.

	▲	namibj 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Those are Not where the tubes are SOTA.