[julianburke]

Personally speaking, I would say the answer to that is NO! Not too many people over here were aware of a "hot" chassis in the first place and Soviet produced merchandise has never been well received here esp in the cold war era. In the late '60's I cannot remember any such issue of a transformer set vs a transformerless set. I can remember back in the late '50's while in grade school in Arlington, Va., that everyone was fearful of the USSR. "Better dead than red" were some of the expressions of the day and I know of no one who would have bought any such product.

This also begs the question of parts, service and warranty repair. Can you imagine a family in that era buying a Soviet TV set! Your neighbors would probably look at you in a different light after that. For that matter, even Japanese sets of the '60's were looked down on and I remember servicing a Hitachi 21" color console in 1970 that everyone looked at it as "what's that"?? It did however have a beautiful color picture!

The only Soviet sets that I have seen have been in Steve McVoys' museum or a picture of one on the internet. They would have to be quite rare and besides, who in Russia could afford one anyway? They would have not been produced in any great numbers. Also their early automobiles are rare and we didn't import any of them either. From any standpoint, much of their stuff was reverse engineered and the quality of their materials was far from satisfactory resulting in a inferior product. Another good example of terrible Soviet products were watches, cameras, calculators and motorcycles. (All reverse engineered) They even tried to copy our Harley Davidson motorcycles resulting in a vehicle that would only run on a 6:1 compression ratio because of 30-50 octane gas over there and manufactured with Soviet iron that you could bend with your bare hands! Stalin also killed all intellectuals and scientists, burned all books that he could to control the public so the gene pool was diminished in the heraldry of engineering. All of the lucky ones came to our country. David Sarnoff? Zworykin? What an interesting read!!

Starting in the late 80's we began to see Soviet products such as "submarine clocks", military uniforms and other such "surplus" being sold here. There was no such animal as this stuff was being marketed to raise cash in their collapsed economy. They had starved their people to build a unwanted war machine and the only things they could make in any quanity was military stuff and was touted as "surplus". There were thousands of those "submarine clocks" available as if they were going to build that many subs! As most of you know, if that clock or watch has a picture of a sub or otherwise on its' face, it is not real surplus but is a novelty item being touted as such. You notice it was all brand new in the wrap-of course it was, it was MADE YESTERDAY! They still sell those early version night vision items which are at least 20 years behind ours and cannot be repaired. Don't buy any of 'em, they're JUNK!!

Tubes: Guess what? When we got down to our last four tube manufacturers, (RCA, GE, Westinghouse and Sylvania) they all traded around to save production costs and when they went out of the tube business, the equipment was taken down AND GIVEN OR SOLD CHEAP TO THE SOVIETS!! We felt at that time that we no longer needed tubes or would ever sell them again and the Soviets, who were at least 20 years behind us in technology were still using them hence their insatiable demand for manufacturing tubes. NOW THEY ARE MAKING THEM AND SELLING THEM BACK TO US FOR 20 OR MORE TIMES THE COST!! Especially audio tubes and I'm still not impressed with them either. It does make me sick when I hear "audiophiles" start talking about their Macs or other tube amps and their special "tubes" like they were invented/discovered yesterday. BS!! Yes, they may sound OK but they just are not worth what they want for them. I did tubes for over 30 years as a living and longer as a hobby so they don't get my immediate attention!

I do however like to play with my tube radios and TV's, and making them work is my natural high!

Pretty much anywhere you go, old technology is given away or sold for very little cost. Since tubes work quite well, they stuck with them for a long time and didn't have to pay any R & D to upgrade themselves. What wasn't given to them, they tried to copy by reverse engineering. I like to collect early four function mechanical calculators and I have an exact Russian copy of a Swedish Odhner. They are identical except for the Russian logo/brand name. Also for the sake of any argument here, Zenith lost their luster quickly when they wouldn't update their facilities and use new improved manufacturing techniques; that's why they failed in their later years. Remember their hand wired chassis'? It had nothing to do with quality as they touted. It is a very expensive manufacturing process but was by far cheaper than upgrading their assembly lines.