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I see. Tom mentioned 50. I thought he was joking!
Actually, I was going to say 100, but I thought I might be just able to support another run if we had 50. The original kits were based on lots of 30 kits. However, that means you need
60 PERFECT tubes. You can't sell someone a kit and then say, "too bad you got a bad one - there are no more tubes." The bad thing is with the 19J6 and its rarity now - about 1 in 5 tubes are bad right out of the box. So, you really need 72. Then there's the odd microphonic tube that doesn't show up in testing - you're up to 80-85, now, so with matching - you might as well make it 100.
Keep in mind that a PCB run of only 30 PCB's will be fairly expensive. The other parts are best bought at 100, too. So if we only get 30, that's going to drive the cost up even more. The original SSMH PCB kits sold for $120 with the machined case from Hammond, but we had at least 3 rounds of 30 kits if memory serves - maybe 4. Then again,
the number of tubes I had to support that when we started was 400. There's the proof, unfortunately: a single run of 30 kits means about 100 tubes.
I still have about 2 dozen tubes - for the reason stated above. I had to be certain that everyone who bought a kit had a pair of good, working tubes. In my mind, that meant holding the extras for at least a year. It's been longer than that now, but that's why I still have them and haven't sold them.
Anyway, I thought we might think seriously about it if we found another 50 and I could add the ones I already had. That's the practicality of the situation.