Hallo Jacob,

When I remember correctly, manufacturers of 74HC-MOS often recommend the use of 74HCU04 for oscillators.

Fabricating quartz oscillation with the help of digital inverters can be very troublesome. You are totally right, when you say, that changing manufacturer can result in desaster. When reliability is a key specification I would only use such HC-MOS quartz oscillator mudules. The expensiver ones often have rather low current consumption and are very advantegous.

Bye,
Kai