My fascination with vacuum tubes started in the early 60's when my father bought a set of
Encyclopedia, "The Book of Knowledge"...
There i came to read an article about how to become a radio amateur.
In that article i saw how the 6SN7 tube was used in a super regenerative receiver
operating at 80 and 40 meter amateur radio band.
And then in high school in my junior year, i saw some big
big transmitter tubes, the 813 was one of them..
My first tube power amp was a 6EM5 push-pull made from
parts borrowed from a high school chum...that was around 1968...
it was a mono amp used to drive a Jensen 8 incher...i used a ceramic
pickup turntable, my favorite then was Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass,
and the Ventures....the 6EM5 was a TV vertial scanning output tube,
borrowed from out Admiral 21 inch BnW tv set, it was a
beam power tube unlike the 6BQ5 which was a pentode, more like a 6973....
Fast forward to around 2000....
while i still had some loose tubes from tv sets stashed,
i really started collecting tubes when i went to work in Russia around 2004....
having met Gerry Sta. Maria here in PDVD, he gave me a lot of tubes to look at,
and since the internet had all datasheets, i was able to look at tube specs and
see what the tubes can do...then there was this all year round sale of
U1$ tubes out of Rogalski's in Miami....this is how i came to accumulate
over a thousand tubes...i also ordered tubes out of Moscow, Russia....
my tube stash can be seen here:
https://www.facebook.com/tony.tecson/media_set?set=a.625867857434852.1073741842.100000349293477&type=1those who are familiar with tubes will quickly note that my tube stash are
mostly TV tubes and some transmitting types, like the 813, 4D32, 7405, 6146, 1624
and the likes...99% of my power tubes are TV horizontal output tubes....
i have a lot of plans to use those tubes i consider as "sleeper" tubes...
scoffed at by the golden ear club as mere TV tubes, but they hold a lot of promise
when put to good use.....
