ECN Forum Forums Photo Discussion Forums Electrical Nostalgia Ghosts From The Past: Vacuum Tubes

Thank You Webmaster

My favorite tube was the rectifier tube ,no filaments lit up i would replace that tube.

There's still people who use vacuum tubes, in audio amplifiers, and people who collect and restore old TV sets and radios. One internet forum is http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=14 for tube amps, and http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=19

I'm one of them; my house is a working museum...never graduated to the "technology pushing" of todays consumerism.
Bakelite dial telephones, valve radios & monochrome TV sets are ordinary things in daily use.

Those tubes are last generation vacuum tubes, probably from 1960's vintage gear. I started in electronics working on cast-off table radios from the post WWII era and TV's from the 50's, so I have a pretty extensive collection of old vacuum tubes laying around my junk box. Even color TV's were still using vacuum tubes up until around 1972 when things changed over to total solid state. But yeah, there are some state of the art audio amplifiers out there with vacuum tube technology, as many purists believe vacuum tube amplification is cleaner than solid state amplification.

You Could make your own
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/01/07/video-making-a-vacuu.html

I can see two 6AL5s in there, as well as what may be some 6BA6s, or 6BE6s. Was this an old radio?

Not sure Hemingray, I never did examine the equipment I was only interested in the tubes themselves at the time. I was able to read some of tube designations though, there's 6AL5, 6HQ5, 6AU6A, 6BY6, 6BZ6, and 0A2WA. One just had 5687 on it. One contained DJ8 that was I could read on it. I think another read 6AN8A. There was another 6BZ6 with BL just above the BZ whatever that means.

If that is a 0A2WA (and not a plain vanilla 0A2), please be careful not to break it. It contains a small amount of a radioactive material (Nickel-63, IIRC).