[geeks] Vacuum tube testing

[wa2egp at att.net]

-------------- Original message from Matthew Braun : -------------- 

> A few years back, when my grandfather died, we looted his house for 
> stuff and among the items I walked away with was a collection of old 
> vacuum tubes. A good number of them are still in their original boxes 
> but some of them are obviously nonfunctional, and I was looking into 
> testing them before I put the tubes up for sale. I've spoken to radio 
> shops about using or renting tube testers, but they say I should just 
> buy one. While I can get one on Ebay for around $50, it seems silly 
> given that I'll only need it for a short while. 
> 
> I was wondering if anyone has experience testing tubes or has a tester 
> that they'd be willing to rent out. No sense letting these tubes just 
> fester in my basement when others out there could be putting them to 
> good use. 

IF you're smart, you could get a tube tester for less, either on eBay or
a ham radio fleamarket.  Thye're not hard to se, just a matter of looking
up the tube in a book (that comes with the tester), plugging in the tube
to the coorect socket and flipping the switches and the test is pretty much
go or no-go.  Usually tube are good if found in the original boxes and
the worse problem is the filament is open.  Too bad you can't find an
old electronic store (not Radio Shack) since they 'may' have a tube tester
but that is getting rare.  Buying a tube tester is not a bad idea because
you never know when you might need one and you could always sell
it again on eBay as being "checked out".  Just make sure you have the book
or some way of determining the position of the switches for the tube
number.......that's almost as important as the tester.  Yes, I have one 
but I don't loan it out....I've got a lot of old tube stuff around here. :->