[hurryinhoosier62]

Originally Posted by dataway

While installing Noico at 3am in the morning I started wondering where it's made ... turns out .. Russia. For some reason I'd rather give them my money than China.

Anyway... Russia also produces some other interesting things. Like some of the best vacuum tubes in the world, and some of the hardest to find tubes. Evidently since USSR technology was a bit behind they continued using vacuum tubes in lots of military and industrial equipment a couple decades beyond the US. So by the time they stopped using vacuum tubes there was a market around the world for people maintaining vintage electronics and the factories just switched to supply that market.

They have quite a business going now providing numerous types of vintage electronics, electro-mechanical devices, vintage military sort of hardware, even some old Soviet era looking light fixtures, clothing, boots etc. A lot of it very ... well, I guess durable is the right word. Fine quality might be a bit lacking, along with wonderful fit and finish, but most of it is built with that 50's sort of durability in mind.

Back in the mid 1970s I remember some “talking head” at Popular Mechanics pontificating about the “backward” technology of the avionics in the MiG-25 when the first one was examined by the USAF in Japan. I also remember many people laughing about the Soviets still using vacuum tubes. One person who wasn’t laughing was Edward Teller, father of the thermonuclear weapon ( hydrogen bomb). He was stunned! EMP was a phenomenon first observed at the first atomic bomb’s detonation in July, 1945. The Soviets saw this effect determined that their military weapons would not be subject to it. They possessed what was arguably the best vacuum tube production system in the world. While the West was producing weapons systems totally dependent on integrated circuits and transistors, the Soviets were developing weapons systems that utilized the tried and true vacuum tubes that resisted EMP. Teller warned the DOD that the U.S. was at least a decade behind the Soviets in “hardening” the electronics in weapons systems. The Soviets weren’t so stupid after all.

[dataway]

I wonder how many of the (at the time high tech) vacuum tube plants ended up in East Germany. Siemens, Telefunken (sp) etc. I know the allies frequently targeted the vacuum tube plants in Germany during the war.

[NeighborsComplaint]

Originally Posted by dataway

I think there are some Soviet electro mechanical reverb/distortion units are very popular right now ... original old ones, often still in their original wooden cases.

If you want to have a laugh. Go on eBay and search "Tonika Electric Guitar". Soviet made Russki interpretation of a western electric guitar.

[02Hawk]

I lived, worked and travelled through out Russia and many of the USSR client states for 5 years To my knowledge everything they built except for aircraft was 100% crap. Vehicles, Tv's , fridges, stoves, furniture, steel, buildings...you name it it was ****. I was in the oil and gas side and everything outside of the actual drilling was bought in the west. Things like downhole pumps, Jacks, service rigs, drill pipe, sucker rods etc all came from Germany or the US. Their drill rigs were crap and it would take them 6 months to drill a three week hole. Their pipelines were crap and never buried, no swamp weights , float up in the middle of a lake, it was laughable if it wasn't so sad. Pipes broke all the time, water lines broke every day, Sewage was pumped into the ditches. Roads were built on a sand base with concrete mats thrown down on top.

The aircraft, however were first class. I rode on all their rotor wing fleet including Mi8 s and mi 6's .....They ran with little maintenance and crap fuel and kept on ticking. Their fixed wing fleet was well built also....all designed to operate from dirt airstrips. The people for the most part were great and easy to get along with.