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SED Winged C / new sensor confusion
Posted: Fri Jun 17, 2016 2:02 am
by Dries
Hello,
I have a question, are the below tubes actually the Winged C's , or already new sensors? It seems they are from '98, but almost all 'winged C's' sold online are from post 2000.
I thought Svetlana stopped producing in the St. Petersburg factory and moved to the new sensor one?
Thank you!
Re: SED Winged C / new sensor confusion
Posted: Sun Jun 19, 2016 11:17 am
by GilmourD
Dries wrote:Hello,
I have a question, are the below tubes actually the Winged C's , or already new sensors? It seems they are from '98, but almost all 'winged C's' sold online are from post 2000.
I thought Svetlana stopped producing in the St. Petersburg factory and moved to the new sensor one?
Thank you!
Actually, it wasn't production that moved.
What happened was that the SED forgot to renew the Svetlana trademark in the US and New Sensor took advantage of that by registering for it themselves.
SED continued manufacturing tubes until only a few years ago, just under different branding (Winged-C) while New Sensor started production of tubes under their newly acquired Svetlana brand.
Mike Matthews has generally been good for the musical instrument industry but I think everybody can agree it was a jerk move on his part to grab somebody else's trademark because of a mistake.
Given that those tubes say "Made in Russia" on them, they're the New Sensor version.