10-16-2009, 01:01 PM
Ron,
I could not agree with you more, in fact this whole subject is a pet peeve of mine. I have literally hundreds of radios and I rarely if ever need to replace a tube. Most of my sets, even those that are restored, just sit on the shelf for most of their life (as I only have time to listen to a fraction of them), so why on Earth would there be a need to put new tubes in such sets? In the unlikely event that a radio I choose to listen to has an unusable tube (a fact that I'll record when I restore it) I'll swap the tube with one from some other shelf queen at that time. There's almost never a need to take a NOS tube for it.
Shot-gun replacement of tubes is an insane practice. Unfortunately I see it often taking place at various meets, where someone will buy an old set and then wander over to the tube seller to buy a set of new tubes for it...
Paul
I could not agree with you more, in fact this whole subject is a pet peeve of mine. I have literally hundreds of radios and I rarely if ever need to replace a tube. Most of my sets, even those that are restored, just sit on the shelf for most of their life (as I only have time to listen to a fraction of them), so why on Earth would there be a need to put new tubes in such sets? In the unlikely event that a radio I choose to listen to has an unusable tube (a fact that I'll record when I restore it) I'll swap the tube with one from some other shelf queen at that time. There's almost never a need to take a NOS tube for it.
Shot-gun replacement of tubes is an insane practice. Unfortunately I see it often taking place at various meets, where someone will buy an old set and then wander over to the tube seller to buy a set of new tubes for it...
Paul
