Possibly OT: vintage vacuum tubes question
In going through my FIL’s things I came across a box with a few hundred vacuum tubes, most just loose in the box. For reference, my FIL was a PhD electrical engineer who worked at RCA - on NASA and other projects - but also liked to build his own speakers and amplifiers. I do not have a tester and in fact my electrical knowledge starts with transistors. I don’t want to give these away - I’m sure he spent hundreds if not more on them - but I also don’t want to go through the process of packing them all for shipping. There are some monster 13cm x 5cm tubes down to smaller c. 5cm tubes. I will lay them out and take photos and try to do some ID, but does anyone have any thoughts on these - or perhaps any interest? - Bob Shuster
Hello Bob, So where are these tubes located? Jeff On Sun, Aug 9, 2026 at 12:53 PM Bob Shuster via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
In going through my FIL’s things I came across a box with a few hundred vacuum tubes, most just loose in the box. For reference, my FIL was a PhD electrical engineer who worked at RCA - on NASA and other projects - but also liked to build his own speakers and amplifiers. I do not have a tester and in fact my electrical knowledge starts with transistors. I don’t want to give these away - I’m sure he spent hundreds if not more on them - but I also don’t want to go through the process of packing them all for shipping. There are some monster 13cm x 5cm tubes down to smaller c. 5cm tubes. I will lay them out and take photos and try to do some ID, but does anyone have any thoughts on these - or perhaps any interest?
- Bob Shuster
I have a tester and books to ID tubes. b On Sun, Aug 9, 2026 at 4:51 PM Jeffrey Brace via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
Hello Bob,
So where are these tubes located?
Jeff
On Sun, Aug 9, 2026 at 12:53 PM Bob Shuster via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vcfed.org> wrote:
In going through my FIL’s things I came across a box with a few hundred vacuum tubes, most just loose in the box. For reference, my FIL was a PhD electrical engineer who worked at RCA - on NASA and other projects - but also liked to build his own speakers and amplifiers. I do not have a tester and in fact my electrical knowledge starts with transistors. I don’t want to give these away - I’m sure he spent hundreds if not more on them - but I also don’t want to go through the process of packing them all for shipping. There are some monster 13cm x 5cm tubes down to smaller c. 5cm tubes. I will lay them out and take photos and try to do some ID, but does anyone have any thoughts on these - or perhaps any interest?
- Bob Shuster
participants (3)
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Bill Degnan -
Bob Shuster -
Jeffrey Brace