• 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.

Tubes from estate, need to test / evaluate in Texas

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My uncle passed away a couple of weeks ago. He was a bench TV repairman by the age of 12 until a judge made him wait until he was 14 to go back to work.
That wasn't his profession through life, but remained one of many hobbies until the end.
I grabbed the boxes of tubes as I'm from a small family and am the only one who has anything in his house that uses them. I'm aware that some of them are potentially valuable.
His small signal tubes were stored in ziplock bags without boxes, nothing valuable there - a couple of years ago he told me he didn't have anything special when I asked for a 12AX7 when working on a phono stage. The one he gave me was dead by the time it made it over a jeep road mountain pass to get back to Austin.
How many total? A couple hundred? Probably more, many more. A bankers box full of octal tubes without boxes. A smaller box of globe tubes more carefully wrapped than the rest, some 2A3, 45, another box of 7/9 pin tubes filled to the top without boxes. Anything that would be found in 1930's - 1950's radio / TV. He was running JJ EL-34's in his Fisher st-300.
Overall collection seems pretty heavy in Zenith radio parts.
Sorry for dragging on. I don't know where to look for evaluation of the collection. He left a Seco 107 tube tester (with a home-brew 4-pin adapter) which I have (and don't know how to use) and would want to compare readings from it to another tube tester and see if they give similar results.

Future projects for me - from what he has, a couple or three pairs of the best 2A3, same for 6L6 variations, pick the best of the matched 6/12SN7 6/12SL7 and other preamp pairs.

In exchange, I'm not sure what to offer but if you are into the hobby there is going to be something interesting. The rest I may wholesale to a bulk buyer while the rest of my family discusses which show cars to divide.
Lots of ancient TV's, radio's available.

Open to suggestions.

Thanks, Cheers and stay safe everyone.
-Jeff
 
I have gone through most of the tubes, and he did indeed have a giant collection of used tires. I haven't attempted to count them, but probably 700 total. At first, I went through the box labeled "octals" hoping to find matching pairs of pristine 5752's - no such luck, or anything resembling luck. Not a single matching pair of 6SN7's.
Moved on the the 7-9 pin box and got excited to find some Fisher labeled Telefunken 12ax7's in a bag with a note that said 100/100 - then realized they had been pulled from my grandfather's 800c. There is quite a bit in there, but not finding any long black plate of anything.
The carefully wrapped box has some with 01A printed on the glass. One is in a Sylvania box. another with Sylvania ST-201A engraved on the base. There are coke bottle shaped ones as well.
A large box of 43, 48, 75, 78, and similar. Guessing these are radio / tv reception types. Some are really beautiful.
Many rectifier tubes, will be interesting to learn more about those.
As far as finding someone to sort and test them, after doing the preliminary sorting over several days I realize that is a lot of ******* work and is a bit too much to ask someone to do as a favor of for a bag of tubes.
As for the Seco 107, honestly a bit afraid to use. He built an adapter box to test the old 4-7 pin tubes. It's supposed to plug into one of the octal sockets on the Seco. Should have asked for a lesson.
There was at least one television tube tester / regenerator but I fear it has made its way to a landfill.
Many labeled with their faults, assuming they were all tested and the bad ones marked is wishful thinking.
 
I have one of those television Tube Tester/Tube rejuvenator. It’s a service repair man’s suitcase type thing not very large used for going out in the field and rejuvenating and testing television tubes. If you need this I’m more than happy to loan it to you just pay the shipping back-and-forth and a deposit in case something comes up with it
 
partial list of tubes that need to be tested

I never mentioned which tubes I wanted tested, but here is a start:
01-A / 201A - both globe and ST - I probably have 15 of them and would like to get the best couple of pairs to build a preamp with.
26 - only four of them, almost all different so not really expecting to find a matched pair.
2A3 RCA grey plate - used.
All of the above I would like to use in builds in front of my F4 clones, and sell the rest with data to show they have been tested to get the most $ for them.

7951 - a set of four to help with decision of what to do with a Fisher 800c which spent all of this century sitting in the bottom of a closet. They look better than any on eBay, but that's just looks.
7868 - from memory there are four that don't match, goal is to be able to list them for sale honestly.

Tip of the iceberg there, there are many and most are probably a collection of used tires. Many obscure, many that might be very good triodes from TV's. A few more one off's that are there to be part of a "collection". My tube tester isn't able to test any of the above, and for the tubes it can test I'm skeptical of the results. I realize this is a lot of work, and willing to pay reasonable fee and / or trade - while also being somewhat concerned about being ripped off.
 
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