The story of Eurotubes starts with Bob Pletka, lifelong musician, gearhead, and machinist. Bob had retained a small collection of vintage tubes to feed his fleet of classic amps, organs, leslies, etc. but by the mid 90’s the stash was dwindling.
Bob had heard about a startup European tube manufacturer in the mid 90’s. This was a huge relief as the state of current production tubes in the era was abysmal. With only a couple of small operations in China and two producers in Russia, the market was ready for a high-quality large-scale producer to step back into the market.
At this time a small number of re-badged tubes started showing up through Groove Tubes, a couple European distributors, and a few big OEM’s (with OEM branding). The guts of these tubes were clearly not of Chinese or Russian origin and the sonics and performance were far superior. So the hunt was on to find the new mysterious producer.
After some extensive detective work the new source was confirmed to be in Czechoslovakia, which had only recently been liberated from the iron-curtain and returned to its pre WWI territories as the Czech and Slovak Republics. This was quite serendipitous as Bob was heading to Prague to visit relatives.
While in Prague one of Bob’s cousins (thanks Jiri!) tracked down two “local” vacuum tube producers. The first was Dr. Kron of KR audio (more on that later), and the second was Jan Jurcho, who was manufacturing tubes about 4hrs away in Čadca, Slovakia. That weekend a luncheon was arranged between Bob and Jan. Bob learned about Jan’s background working R&D at Tesla as well as the inside scoop on Jan’s ever growing vacuum tube operation. Impressed by Jan’s background, knowledge, and his willingness to answer any-and-all questions (a rarity in this industry), Bob directly purchased what he thought would be a lifetime supply of tubes…
Fast forward 12 months and Bob’s stash had been depleted by his bandmates, friends, and friends of friends. Bob reached out to Jan to see if he would be willing to ship him another “lifetime supply”. Surprised by the request Jan asked Bob if he would like to be an official US importer for JJ Electronic. Eurotubes was born. The first shipment could not have come sooner. Word had spread and Bob was starting to receive tube inquires on his home landline from all over the world.
Starting with this first official factory shipment Bob had requested the tubes be factory marked. Bob had no interest in hiding who his source was, and these were the first tubes to be imported into the US with the official JJ Electronic logo proudly displayed on the tube and its factory packaging.
By 1988 Eurotubes had grown, a second trip to the JJ factory had been made, our official online store launched, and the company would become Bob’s main business for the next 20+ years…
For more info, including photos from our factory visits, please see our Blog posts.
