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    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

Quick valve construction question

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I have a friend in the surplus business who buys warehouse loads of military and electronics surplus. He takes out what he can sell, and usually sells the rest as scrap. I picked up the vacuum tubes out of three lots of surplus, in exchange for help unloading the trucks. In all three cases, the "good stuff" (audio tubes) had already been sold.

Yes, after the third trip to get tubes (they were 200 miles away), I had to rent a warehouse to keep them all. Two of the lots were mostly used tubes that had been sorted and bagged in paper bags. Unfortunately the bags (and many of the boxes) had rotted away a long time ago. The tubes were thrown into 22 8 cubic foot boxes by the people hired to clean out the warehouse after the owner had died. About one third of them were broken. The other lot was mostly new tubes from a TV repair distributor.

What have I found?

About 1000 6AL5 dual diode tubes, used. I use them for target practice!
About 500 to 1000 2D21 thyratrons, used. I can't think of a use for these.
About 1000 of the tubes that were used in radios from the 1930's to the 1950's, used. Since I collect and fix old radios, I have sorted and boxed most of these.
Zillions of "computer tubes" from the dawn of the digital age, used. 5963, 5965, 7044, and many other dual triodes. Some of these are actually excellent audio tubes. I have been testing these in audio circuits.
A few hundred 6AS7's, used, most are good.
Several large boxes of military tubes from the WWII era, used. 807's, 1625,s VT225's, as well as many numbers that I don't recognize. Some of these are also good audio tubes.
Several boxes full of strange industrial and military rectifiers, thyratrons, nixies, and other weird tubes. I will eventually put these on Ebay.
A few thousand subminiature tubes. I am sure that some of these would work for audio, but I haven't tested them yet.
Many receiving tubes from military electronics of the WWII era, used. Many of these may be good audio tubes. I am breadboarding circuits with the types that I have lots of, in order to find out which ones work well for audio.
Several thousand TV repair tubes, most with odd filament voltages. All new in boxes. Some of these work well for audio. See the thread where someone asked about 6AV5's. I found 5 of these in the warehouse, and tried them in a TubelabSE amp. They rocked! Since they were esentially free, I had no reason not to test them well beyond the published ratings. Here again, they rocked!

This is what I have found in about half of the boxes. I have looked in all of the boxes, and come to the conclusion that there NO 300B's or KT88's or any other cool tubes. There WERE 3 GE 845's wrapped in newspaper, marked "transmitter spares", they work!
 
Interesting stuff!

You should think about putting one of each aside and starting a valve museum. There are a couple of guys collecting things like the first home computers (BBC Microprocessors, Commodores, Ataris etc) while they can still scoop them relatively cheaply before they become too rare.

Click me!

I think if I had that many spare valves I'd make a wall display or something for my home, retro style. That could be a good use for all the used ones you can't sell. Or string tens of them together and cycle the heaters on and off to make a set of dancing valve based Christmas lights, for a rounder and warmer sounding Christmas! :)

Or remove the valve bases (diamond saw or score and snap) and sell the envelopes as glass slides for guitarists.

It's impossible not to ask, do you have any piccies of the valves?
 
I have a few pictures of the warehouse, showing enormity of the collection. I will put a few on the web site when I do the next update.

At this time, I have no space for any type of display or collection. My small house, that I have lived in for 28 years, was filled with "collectibles" a long time ago. The warehouse is so full that I haven't been able to get to the boxes on the bottom of the pile for a long time.

I had a collection of a few of the original "home computers" (Apple 1, SWTPC 6800, Imsai 8080 etc) but I gave them away years ago because of space.
 
Cars won't fit in my garage either, but there are no tubes in there. I conceeded the garage as my wifes storage location. After all I have one bedroom for the Tubelab development room (and my listening room), and I have the warehouse for storage. She has the garage, and the bedroom formerly occupied by my daughter (she is grown up and gone). So you see the space for "stuff" is evenly divided.
 
Johan Potgieter said:

But I do have the edge on the cable afficionados. They still have to discover that, with all that frenzied electron traffic in cables, these things wear out! That is why you really have to replace after 2 years! :D :D



but of course you can 'flush out' all the damaged electrons (you know, the ones with the odd quark knocked off) by applying a short pulse of dc to your mains cable. Naturaly you have to use a special gold plated audiophile grade AA-cell, hand made by monks in Japan for this.
 
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