• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

What are some of the wackiest tubes?

This is the beginning of a project to build an amp/radio, in 50s style

You'll need some old "surface mount" sockets, with screws and nuts to fasten the wires.

You could use some high performance "modern" tubes if they have the right look, top seal nipple, metal skirt.


the output xfmr should have some "battery nut" type binding posts.
 

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8025, 316A

No idea how they would perform for audio, but the 8025 triode with 4 side caps and a top nipple and the 316A or other "doorknob" tubes look unusual. The 815 is a large octal dual beam-power with 2 caps. Many transmitting tubes, especially those for UHF or microwave look unusual, but many of the microwave tubes are useless other than to look at or for the designed frequencies.


I sold all my doorknob tubes, but have several 8025 available in my ebay store.
 
6Spud5 tube Spud curves
Could wire a real tube inside. Baked Spud.

Another idea. Make a black box with lots of pins on each side like a large DIP IC package. Put a window up top like an Eprom chip. Then put some sub-mini tubes inside behind the window.
 

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I wonder if the absence of TS since post #1 means the proposed tubes still aren't wacky enough.

A tube with 7 diodes in it, a mercury arc rectifier in action, and (a little off topic) the building of MBLE, a former tube/electronics manufacturer from Belgium, at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.
 

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You need a bigger tube then.
 

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I still have 2 TBW6/6000 tubes with the original water jackets. I tried them once with a 4KV 1A PSU and they worked quite OK inspite of the low plate voltage…

Regards, Gerrit
 

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No idea how they would perform for audio, but the 8025 triode with 4 side caps and a top nipple and the 316A or other "doorknob" tubes look unusual. The 815 is a large octal dual beam-power with 2 caps. Many transmitting tubes, especially those for UHF or microwave look unusual, but many of the microwave tubes are useless other than to look at or for the designed frequencies.


I sold all my doorknob tubes, but have several 8025 available in my ebay store.

Any tube that has nipples is ok with me! That would merge my two favorite pass times!