>     Bonjour, Bill!
Hello from Seattle, WA!
 BD>> Anyway, what's the music & audio scene like over there?  Anything
 BD>> made domestically there, or is everything imported?
>        In Russia (that's where I live) we have very long tradition of 
>        vacuum-lamp amplifiers making. I think you know, that most lamps, 
>        used in USA made audio technic where imported to USA from USSR (and 
>        China), because they has very small price with not bad quality. But 
>        other (semiconductor) compounds, produced in USSR always was not of 
>        the best quality, because our industry did not know any concurence. 
>        That was caused by "soviet" centralised economic system. Only 
>        military technic, produced in USSR was of the "world" quality... In 
>        1985 in USSR the "perestroika" began. The new gouvernement, witch 
>        in the head where Gorbochev, tried to reparate economic system of 
>        the country, byt in 1991 USSR had crashed down. The new Russian 
And the fun thing is that many people in the US prefer the sound that 
the vacuum-lamp amplifiers have rather than transistor amplifiers.
The manufacturers in the US had declared Vacuum tubes to be "obsolete" 
and they stopped making them.
When it became possible to do business with Russia, two companies: 
Svetlana and MosValve started selling fantastic quality tubes to very 
happy audiophiles!!!
A vacuum tube will produce even order harmonics when it distorts - 
transistors product odd-order harmonics - even order sounds better.
Another story is that there is a major German microphone company 
Neuman - their microphones sell for about $1,800US new for the cheap 
models.  Neuman had an East German division which they lost when 
Berlin divided.  This company is selling *their* microphones under the
name "Microtech Geffel" and they are quite good!
>        interprises, who produced some not bad audio for home use was in 
>        Estonia, Litva, Latvia, than after 1991 they become forigen for 
>        Russia, but bacause only Russia always buyed all their production, 
>        now they are in very bad situation - nobody in the world want to 
>        buy their technic. If you understood what I wrote (with so "good" 
>        English as mine, I think that was not very simple ;-) you must 
>        understand too, that now in Russia we all are surrounded by 
>        imported technic, because we have no domestic audio, but everybody 
>        in the world want to sell us tomething after they received this 
>        possibility :-) In the domain of home audio Panasonic try of all 
Maybe someone should check these companies out - really really good 
high-end vacuum tube amplifiers can sell for $1,000US on up.
There is also a market for tube special effects: compressors, filters, 
limiters, etc...
Best of luck!
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