NASA
When I worked at Alesis I talked to an older gent. who used to work at NASA in the Apollo days. He told me that they used we417's on a lot of there communication PCB's. The rule was that when powering up a board for testing if it failed it HAD to be fully retubed! So he had a few buckets of mostly 417's at home that were mostly good tubes. "do you still have 'em?" I asked. "No" he said "i threw them away a year or two ago 'cause I didn't think anyone wanted stuff like that anymore."
OUCH!
Best
Robert Morin
When I worked at Alesis I talked to an older gent. who used to work at NASA in the Apollo days. He told me that they used we417's on a lot of there communication PCB's. The rule was that when powering up a board for testing if it failed it HAD to be fully retubed! So he had a few buckets of mostly 417's at home that were mostly good tubes. "do you still have 'em?" I asked. "No" he said "i threw them away a year or two ago 'cause I didn't think anyone wanted stuff like that anymore."
OUCH!
Best
Robert Morin
Whats wrong with grinding up tubes that don´t pass ? They will just cause problems in ppl´s amps if let out, thats why they are ground up and thrown out. See here: http://www.vintagetubeservices.com/RCATour_5.htm
RCA had trouble with reject semiconductors finding their way into the black or grey market. They were selling off the weak but not dead transistors for cheap to customers that were not at all fussy about the ratings. Thing was, some of that stuff was already marked, and got sold to customers that DID care about performance. So RCA stopped selling any rejects. After a while they accumulated a few 55 gallon drums of bad transistors. They were building a new factory building, so the execs took the barrels of bad transistors and dumped them on the gravel bed that was about to have a concrete slab poured to create the factory floor. THAT took 'em out of circulation.
There were problems with people taking used weak tubes from repair shops, washing the dust and dirt off them, and selling them as new. That's a reason for using water based ink to mark the tubes, so the designation would wash off with the dirt....
So crushing the rejects was a reasonable thing to do.
There were problems with people taking used weak tubes from repair shops, washing the dust and dirt off them, and selling them as new. That's a reason for using water based ink to mark the tubes, so the designation would wash off with the dirt....
So crushing the rejects was a reasonable thing to do.
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