OMG! I Have So Many Tubes.

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by etzeppy, Jun 5, 2018.

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  1. etzeppy

    etzeppy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Texas, US
    So many "6"s....that is by far the largest lot followed by "1"s. Good to know about the 12au6. I have 17 of those so far. I am getting very close on a full inventory of the small box units. It will be while longer on the power tubes.

    I know everyone wants 12AX7's. I wish I could say there are bunch here. There are a few and some of the variations of the 12AX7 like the ECC84, 7058, etc . The inventory is on paper at the moment, thanks to my lovely wife for working hard on that. I will get it into a spreadsheet soon and figure out a way to post it.
     
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  2. coopmv

    coopmv Newton 1/30/2001 - 8/31/2011

    Location:
    CT, USA
  3. vinylkid58

    vinylkid58 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Victoria, B.C.
    Some of the old guitar amps ran the heaters in a series string right off the mains, without an isolation trans.:yikes:

    Widowmaker?

    jeff
     
  4. etzeppy

    etzeppy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Texas, US
    The small envelope tubes (i.e. small box / small bottle) have been alphabetized and inventoried. The total number is 3,143. Here is a link to the inventory sheet as it sits now.

    Dropbox - tube_inventory.pdf

    I am posting this to share progress with the members here. I am in no position to sell any of these yet. I still need to gain access to a tube tester and figure out what I intend to stockpile for myself. If you see something that looks wrong, let me know. I was careful but probably still made mistakes.

    I'll be working on the larger tube packages next. There are less of those but sill a bunch. It might be a few weeks. I need a break.....
     
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  5. timind

    timind phorum rezident

    The wife is assisting? You are a lucky man.
     
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  6. etzeppy

    etzeppy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Texas, US
    She did a good bit of the sorting and all of the paper inventory. She likes OCD tasks like that. It's our anniversary today, as a matter of fact.
     
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  7. dividebytube

    dividebytube Forum Resident

    Location:
    Grand Rapids, MI
    the chance of a 300B being in there is pretty darn low - in the olden days it was a Western Electric produced tube made specifically for their products and serviced by their technicians. Same with the 310. Same with the 5687 - military tube not used for any commercial gear that I've ever heard of.

    Some other oddballs worthy of searching for:

    12BY7 - used in early Harmon-Kardon Citation amps
    12DW7 - driver for various amps, including Dynaco
    7199 - Dynaco driver tube for various amps
    6J7 / 6SJ7 / 6C6 - pentode driver tubes for DIYers and some vintage gear
    ECC40 - medium-mu 8-pin rimlock tube and it's brother the EF40, an rimlock version of the EF86 (both European tubes)
    7DJ8 - 7V filament version of the 6DJ8
    and the old metal 6L6 / early coke bottle 6L6G / 5881
    7N7 - loctal version of the 6SN7
    12BH7 - medium mu dual triode
    6CG7 - medium mu dual triode
    the oldies: 01 / 71 / 26 / 27 / 45 / 46 / 50 / 10Y - could also be labeled as 271 or 201 (for example)
    6N7 - neat old dual triode in a "G" bulb
    807 - top plate version of the 6L6 with a UX5 socket (or the 12V filament 1625 with the 12V filament / UX7 socket)
    and the 12V filament 12SN7 and 12SL7
    6J5 - single triode, or 1/2 of a 6SN7

    sorry if I repeated anyone else
     
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  8. vinylkid58

    vinylkid58 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Victoria, B.C.
    Congrats. Hope you're taking her out on the town.

    jeff
     
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  9. RDriftwood

    RDriftwood Vintage Member

    Location:
    Midwestern US
    This was me about 5 years ago. I inherited 3 tube collections from 2 relatives. (One of the relatives inherited a tube collection in addition to his own tube collection.) They are mostly useless TV, radio, military, and ham radio tubes - but I found enough audio tubes (mostly rectifier tubes) to make it worth the time and effort (I'm retired). I would sit at my PC with a box at a time and enter tube info into Excel spreadsheets. I also ended up with an attractive collection of antique globe and ST (coke bottle shaped) tubes.

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    Fortunately, I was also given one of the best tube testers ever made... a Hickok made Western Electric KS-15750-L2 - which is similar to the Hickok 539 (models B & C).

    [​IMG]

    All of this was very fortunate because I've owned and been interested in tube amps (audio and guitar) for more than 50 years. I currently own about 20 tube amps including 4 pair of monoblocks.
     
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  10. jtiner

    jtiner Forum Resident

    Location:
    Maine
    5Y3 rectifiers (8 pin octal base) were used in many products - nothing special, but probably a wide audience...
     
  11. Bill Hart

    Bill Hart Forum Resident

    Location:
    Austin
    This is porn. I love it! Good luck sorting through all those.
    I was trying to think of an easy way to find a spread sheet that was already in existence-- I'm familiar with the tube data sheets but those are individual and too much to compile. I wonder if somebody like Brendan at Tubeworld would be willing to send you something, like a blank form, organized by rectifier, power tubes, small tubes, each with separate categories for type, if you are willing to consider selling off some of them to him.
    How else do major retailers do it? Brent Jesse's page is extremely detailed but a bit of a headache and I'm not sure it is complete.
    You might reach out to The Tubemonger- they are very good, small outfit, and ask for some organization advice, with the prospect you might have some tubes to sell them.
    Anybody else have an idea for sourcing a spreadsheet/blank form that already has the categories? That would help.
    Testing is a whole other matter.
    Don't some of you love RCA black plate 12ax7s? Those are good ol' American tubes.
    My personal tube needs at this point are, shall we say, rather odd.
     
  12. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    Just yesterday my nephew and I visited an antique store in Harrisburg called Atomic Warehouse, where there must have been milk crates, display boxes, drawers and for the most part, BAJILLIONS of tubes laying around. One assumes most were not of value, and there have probably been hoardes of hipsters, fedoras and sharktooth shirts a-flutter with opportunity, kneeling and squinting and blowing dust from package to floor to read the little bitty numbers. If they knew what they were doing, this owner could probably be looking at a large trash canister of debris in the making, but...we all know, not every coffee conoisseur knows what they're doing in these cases....
     
  13. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    "AJ-383 was beguiling, shining in the flourescent lamp, her openings all ready for the jutting shape of the tube-assembly to make that electrical contact that would bring her closer to an electrical moment. From across the room, the Zenith Tube Tester box leered, knowing how anxious these slutty little vacuums can be in the presence of a biig, swaggering Philco chassis...."
     
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  14. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Monumental job! Hat's off to you, sir. :tiphat:
     
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  15. etzeppy

    etzeppy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Texas, US
    Nice!
     
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  16. Bill Hart

    Bill Hart Forum Resident

    Location:
    Austin
    Funny. Brilliant, actually.
    We have a friend here in Austin that we met when we first starting coming down here part of the year (now we are fully relocated). She's a very interesting woman--she turned 80 this year and has had multiple careers over her life-- she was into racing sailboats, a golf pro, a school teacher, etc. One of the things she did for money was write soft porn back in the days when books were not in e-format. She said she'd make 3 grand over a weekend and never had to.... Well, you get the idea. She's an absolute hoot.
     
  17. RDriftwood

    RDriftwood Vintage Member

    Location:
    Midwestern US
    I fired up the tube tester for the first time in a long time last night...

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    Testing pairs of 12AU7s (left) and old RCA 6V6 GTs with gray glass (right). I just ordered more of each and they will be delivered next week. Will be upgrading tubes in two Bottlehead preamps, a Magnavox power amp (rescued from a console), the input tubes in the Dynaco MK3 monoblocks, and a 1967 Princeton Reverb guitar amp.

    Testing 12AX7s, 12AU7s, 12AT7s and such is a bit of a pain because they are dual triodes - which means they are really two tubes in one - so you have to test each one twice with different settings. It gets time consuming if there are a lot to test.

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    The workbench in my guitar storage room. ^
     
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  18. harby

    harby Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR, USA
    For just the heaters, it's just a little more dangerous than a lightbulb. The heater filament is like a lightbulb filament, and is not part of the audio chain, so shouldn't present a danger unless there is a major malfunction, like the insides of the tube being quite broken and shorting out, and still there is usually a resistor and/or capacitors between the amp input jack and the fault.

    For selling these, just make the Excel file a format you can import into your web store inventory... If they are new and unopened, I wouldn't bother with testing them first, except to prove to yourself that they were working before the buyer complained they weren't. Multiply 2 minutes per, x 3000 tubes...
     
  19. etzeppy

    etzeppy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Texas, US
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  20. RDriftwood

    RDriftwood Vintage Member

    Location:
    Midwestern US
    That looks a lot like my tube list.

    You might want to highlight the 6AN8A tubes in red as they are used as drivers in Dynaco MK3 amps, some Sunn guitar amps, and possibly others. I've been told by a tube dealer that good ones are hard to find even among NOS tubes.

    6DJ8 is a preamp tube - too bad you only have one. (I have this problem a lot - one short of a pair or quad.)

    The 2 Amperex ECC83/12AX7 should be great sounding tubes if they test strong.

    You were fortunate to get a good number of 12AX7/12AU7/12AT7 tubes - also the 12BH7s (McIntosh MC30) drivers and others).

    :cheers:
     
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  21. etzeppy

    etzeppy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Texas, US
    Thanks for the info on the 6AN8A. I will add that to the comments. Red on my sheet means I pulled it for my "special" box during sorting. The others are all boxed in alphabetical order.

    I need to go back through this thread and look for other relevant comments.
     
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  22. Larry I

    Larry I Senior Member

    Location:
    Washington, D.C.
    etzeppy,

    That must have been a LOT of work making the spreadsheet. But, it is a very useful thing to have and to share with those looking for particular tubes. I hope you find enough buyers to make it worth the trouble.

    Good job!
     
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  23. Just Walking

    Just Walking Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Wow. What a list!
     
  24. etzeppy

    etzeppy Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Texas, US
    If you look back at the start of this thread, I had not intended to perform a full inventory. I was going to cherry-pick from a short list and dump the rest. However, I began to find some interesting tubes that I think others may put to good use. I figured out that I would never know what I had or where I had it without bucking up on doing a real inventory. My wife is very organized and helped make much quicker work of it. I did the medium boxes this weekend. That group added up to up to 1324 units. My total is now at 4470. Here they are:

    [​IMG]


    I will start the large box tubes tonight.
     
  25. Slimwhit33

    Slimwhit33 Forum Resident

    Location:
    N America
    Happy (now belated) Anniversary!
     
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