Western Electric 416-B and C "Golden Triodes" and Daniele Ansaloni's "ANSA High Tension" site

In by perusal for the tube to be used in my one-of-a-kind LCR-RIAA phono, while browsing the WEB, I found Daniele's site and Forum... it was about 2 years ago, when I read somewhere Jeffrey Jackson and Dave Slagle quoted - in my experience - WE 416's for the very first time ever...

The WE 437A - which I later choose as "the" tube to be used in my project was still discussed and weighted on my part, while also the WE 416B or C was among the (very) few among to be chosen... then the several chatting with Thomas Mayer, in Berlin and Munchen, in the last two year or so...

... entered Daniele Ansaloni's site.

If you Google for Western Electric 416-B, you'll find several inputs... mostly "what do you think about..." or the like... THE VERY ONLY site where these sought-after triodes, superbly crafted with painstacking care in WE's plants between early '50s and '84 and used in places and situations where extreme quality was needed (atomic clocks, telephone stations, TV transmission stations, etc.) was and still is Daniele Ansaloni's.

Daniele did a SUPERB work: searched and surfed the whole Web and wrote and took pixes of these exotic "golden triodes" - i.e. his definition suggested by the colour of the metal body of WE 416's itself, but also from their building quality and superb data-sheet -and, after reading the load of technical essays he wrote, well informed, in-deep speculations, not easy but still readable like an industrial tale, down to risking his health in inhaling berillyum-oxide powder during the dismantling of such a tube (20 times more poisonous than arsenic!!!) makes me proud to be italian;-)))

It appears to be, as a corpus, something which filtered the Sears, Thoersten, Miller's essays on the matter, creating maybe THE DEFINITIVE user's guide to this weird tube... a worldwide achievment, plainly said!

Have a look to his site... you'll be blincking your eyes in disbelief, swearing about the quality (some pages are also translated into a great english prose...) in content, pixes and informations squeezed in his essays.

A true, sincere sensei-san.

Daniele's site and forum

P.S. - a WE 416-C/Tango EQ-600 LCR-RIAA based phono-preamp will be the next task for Thomas Mayer and myself, as well, in the very next future... as only the dead remains still!

;-)))