How can you be sure you
are getting the tubes made in
JSC Svetlana's St. Petersburg's factory?
Look for the "Winged C" logo!
As the tube world gets more and more complicated, it is important to make sure that you know what you are buying and how to identify the tubes you want to buy. Here's the story:
JSC Svetlana is a
Russian company that owns and operates the Svetlana factory in St. Petersburg,
Russia, which has been making vacuum tubes for almost a century. These
tubes have been known in the United States as Svetlana brand tubes and
have had the "S" logo and/or the logo 
(a Cyrillic S) on them. Because of a change in ownership of the former
American distributor, JSC Svetlana recently lost its ability to sell vacuum
tubes bearing the "Svetlana" name, while maintaining the ability
to sell the tubes bearing the
logo in the United States and Canada.
The Xpo-pul factory (formerly part of Reflector) in Saratov, Russia is an entirely different Russian company that makes vacuum tubes for an American corporation that controls the Sovtek and Electro-Harmonix brand names. This same American corporation now also owns and controls the Svetlana brand name in the United States and Canada and recently introduced a line of Svetlana branded vacuum tubes produced in the Xpo-pul factory. The Xpo-pul factory "Svetlana" tubes are not the same Svetlana tubes that you have been accustomed to over the years!
Rest assured that the Svetlana factory in St. Petersburg, Russia is still producing vacuum tubes and has no plans to stop.
All
current production St. Petersburg factory tubes -- and only those tubes
-- do bear the
mark, while in the past some did not. In today's world if you want the
tubes that you've come to know in the past as "Svetlana", the
only way to be sure you're getting that tube is to look for the
mark.
