Remember TV Tube Testing?

[ChattanoogaPhil]

Our TV regularly suffered tube issues. Those were great times with dad removing the TV tubes and going down to the grocery store to use the tube tester. When back together and the TV worked right it was a great feeling of accomplishment and very empowering for a little kid.

 

[mule69]

That photo brings back memories for sure.

 

[Ivan the Butcher]

I remember in the mid 60's every drug store and most dime stores having Tube testers. By 1970 the tester was usually still in place but the stock of tubes was mostly empty. Buy 1974 (the year I graduated High School) you couldn't find test stations anywhere! If you were lucky, the Radio Shack could help you out a little!(and get a free 9V carbon battery while you were there!)

Ivan

 

[chief38]

Yup!

My living room is decorated with many working antiques and my basic rule (to myself & my wife) is they MUST be in 100% working condition - just because.... About 20 years ago while redoing the living room, we found a GE radio made in the early 1930's. The seller did not know if it worked and there was no cord so I was not able to test it. We bought it anyway and when I got home I attached a cord and dial light came on. I waited for about 90 second and was about to be disappointed, but just at that moment the radio started playing! I plain forgot how long it takes for old tubes to warm up! Thankfully all the tubes and components worked because I'll bet they're a P.I.T.A. to get a hold of now.

I was so pleased with the way it worked (INCLUDING ALL THE TUBES) which look to be original) that I seeked out some of the Radio Collectors online and purchased a set of ORIGINAL cloth colored wires (new old stock original GE wire) to replace all the frayed ones in there. Since they are all NOS wires, I still consider this radio to be original. I also replaced the Grill cloth with NOS GE cloth because there were holes in the one on the radio. Later on I also was able to purchase NOS power cord and an original Bakelite 2 prong plug.

My friends are still amazed that something that old still works - and oh btw, it also receives short wave!

SORRY the pic is rotated 90º (it's not on my photo album) and can't figure out why it happens sometimes on this Forum when posting pics. How do I correct this btw??

 

[Kanewpadle]

My dad still has an Marantz receiver/amplifier that uses tubes. 50 years old and works like it's new.

 

[Tyrod]

You could test all the tubes in a TV except the TV tube (CRT). Touch that flyback transformer one time and you'll quit testing TV tubes. The experience has been compared to being shot. With the current available in an old tube set, death could and did happen occasionally.

 

[martybee]

What's A TV Tube???
Is that some kind of tubing used to inject Plasma into the screen?

 

[steveno]

in the air force when we replaced a radio in an airplane one the first things we did was check all of the tubes and that usually fixed the problem. some of the radios were so old that you had to be a mechanic as well.

ARC-27


ARC-34

 

[ladder13]

Yep, mom not dad, he was working two jobs, dragged my sister and I down to the the local Woolworth's.

Those were neat contraptions.

 

[Bozz10mm]

I remember those tube testers back in the 70's. Most 7-11 stores had one. The thing is, even tho my tubes seemed to always test bad, the new one never fixed the problem. I started to believe it was some kind of scam.

 

[2ffat]

In the 70's I worked at a radio station. You should have seen the tubes in the transmitters. I've worked quite a few times on tubes in TV and small radios. I can't say I'm sorry to see everything move to solid state circuitry. I never touched the flyback in TVs but I saw a few who did. OUCH!!!! I learned to short out the set after unplugging it BUT if the flyback was bad, you could still have a massive charge in the capacitors. Nope, I don't miss that at all.

 

[phantomcycle]

In my younger years TV's where my curse i was a regular visitor to the drug store to test tube's
At one time i had two TV's stacked on top of each other one tv had picture the other had sound
I found after a few too many adult beverages it was important to match the picture with the sound otherwise watching TV made no sense at all

Sent from my LG-K371 using Tapatalk

 

[whitestang]

My dad was a service manager of an appliance store and had a large case full of tubes and a small tester. There was also a large tester in the store,with even more tubes.

 

[DWalt]

Back in the 1950s, my dad bought his own portable tube tester and always kept a shoebox full of replacement tubes. That tube tester got a lot of use in keeping our old 15" Stromberg-Carlson TV set going. Always the same routine - pull out each tube, test it, put it back if it was good, replace it if it was bad. There were probably 20 tubes in that old set. I bought a new Zenith color TV set around 1969 and I remember it had both tubes and transistors. It gave me a lot of problems, but we kept it until the late 1970s. Our current TV is a flat screen Samsung plasma we bought in early 2010, and has never given us a second's difficulty. Many who didn't grow up in the era of tube-type TV sets can't appreciate how much better solid state electronics are.

 

[Kanewpadle]

in the air force when we replaced a radio in an airplane one the first things we did was check all of the tubes and that usually fixed the problem. some of the radios were so old that you had to be a mechanic as well.

ARC-27


ARC-34

My dad worked on those too. He was in communications. Last stint was the MARS station.

 

[blackdeuce]

I don't have any old tube electronics. My mother has some. Maybe I'll end up with it some day.

My son is a guitar player and we have at least nine guitar amps. All of them are full tube. It's interesting that this older technology is the best choice for guitar amps.

I also have a stereo preamp by Conrad Johnson that has tubes. It has a nice warm sound.

 

[Ozark Marine]

How about the TV repair man? Made house calls and carried a dual handle flip top tube/tool case.
I dreaded the words "I gotta take this back to the shop".

 

[H Richard]

Yes, I remember the tube tester in the corner drug store, right by the comic book stand. My first car was a 47 Dodge coupe, with no radio. I was able to locate a late 40's DeSoto in the junk yard and had to remove the radio myself. (That took about a half hour figuring out how to get that monster out of behind/beneath the dash). I took out every tube and tested them as I didn't want to have to take it out again, it was such a pain.

 

[67tempest]

I also remember when every drug store had a tube testing machine. That picture brings back old memories.

A friend of mine is working on a 1956 Cadillac Wonder Bar radio. The thing is full of tubes, loaded with capacitors and the connections are soldered together using cloth covered wire. The Wonder Bar feature is operated using and electric motor and solenoid attached to a mechanical gear drive system. It even has vacuum ports where the vacuum wipers hook up to the radio to operate the vacuum operated power antenna. It looks like a high school kids science project.

I don't think anyone under the age of about 50 would even know what a vacuum tube is.

 

[hittman77]

Hey! I was many times the guy folks came to in order to get their TV tubes checked out. While in high school in the 70's I worked for a local small town mom and pop TV / Appliance / Furniture Store. We had a tube tester machine and folks came in ofter with one.

We sold Zenith, Quasar (after Motorola) and Curtis Mathes TVs. Even had actual real live "bench techs" who worked on the electronic gizmo's.