This piece of historical equipment is an oldie but a real goodie. It is surprisingly accurate, and identifies the bad tubes indeed. I have tried it, with several known to be good and / or bad tubes. It is has a second transformer build in, the adapt it for 230 Volts, and it has a European mains connector. The electronics is all original, not changed or repaired, and no repair is due. It seems to be very little used, alls switches work smooth. The leakage test is very sensitive. All in all this tester is of very good quality. It can test any tube that it has the sockets for. If you want to test a later model tube, you can take the settings of a similar tube, with the same pin out. For instance the 300B was not invented yet when this tester was made, but you can just take the 2A3 settings, but change the filament to 5V. Like this, it can even test the BIG tubes like Emission Labs EML520B-V3. The wood sure needs a new paint, but it has no scratches or any damage. The lid can be removed, and is not pictured here, but belongs with it. The tester can test Octal, Noval, 7 pin miniature, subminiature tubes ( small brown socket on the right), Loctal, UX4, UX5, UX6, and two other sockets that I don't know the name off. For use in Europe, I recommend to take out the middle socket on the left side, it's for USA radios, you don't need that one. Put a European side-connector in there, so you can test AD1and other l tubes from the 1940's ... 1950's. etc. Also the UX6 socket is pretty useless today, so you can put a B4 socket in there, to test RGN1064, etc. To get 4V you can take one of the strange voltages like for instance 110V, and connect that to a small transformer that gives 220 to 8V. (like a door bell transformer) Then when you switch to 110V you get 4V instead. That will give you a very nice tester. The load setting for AD1 is the same as for the 2A3. You can test almost any tube with the tester. Even voltage regulators can be tested. I tested a 150V OD3 tube in one of the next pictures. Or just use adapter sockets, and plug those into the octal socket. All materials to make those I have for you. |
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This is the same tube, the bad section. Note: You only need to flip switches 2 and 7 to test the both sections of a double triode. Very comfortable! This tester reacts quite negative on this tube. Good tester :)
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This is a new production 2A3, Electro Harmonics, gold grid series.
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This is a used AVVT tube that was just just below ok, when I got it back. This reproduces nicely on this tester. Note you can test 300B on this tester too, though it is not on the roll chart, because it didn't exist when this tester was made. For 300B use 2A3 setting, but take 5V filament. Any later tube, 6550, or KT88 is no problem to test, take 6L6 settings.
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A new, good Emission Labs 300B.
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This is a weak, suspicious Type 50. This tester has the funny 7.5 Volts filament voltage for it!
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When you test a voltage regulator, this will light up the tube, when it is good. The needle reading should be only four lines.
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This tester has a LIKE NEW Roll Chart. You can see it is an almost unused tester
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This is how to test the leakage function of a tube tester, you connect a variable resistor, to random pins, and then try to find the "leakage". The lamp should start to burn at around 1Meg ohms, be 25% brightness at 400k Ohms, and be nice bright at 100k. It works perfect with this tester.
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| This is the leakage test, from plate to cathode, with the 807 tube. The lamp burns very dim, which shows some leakage, but this is a good tube, as long as the lamp burns very dim. It says so also in the manual, so this tube is ok. |
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 TV11 Schematic |
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