OK I am interested in getting myself a tube tester and wondered which one was a good one without having to spend a fortune on .

Any ideas ?

George

I use a US Military one, a TV-7 D/U, and it works great. It comes with a manual with complete specs for all tubes, tests for mutual transconductance, gas, shorts, etc., and is small to boot. You can find these on eBay fairly often.

HTH
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Hi George , Alan here (Pedalfest).
2 Suggestions, but an Emery Superbaby or I have an old Knight Tube tester sitting in the garage I don't use.

Best

af

Thanks alot for the advice there guys .


How much are you looking to get for it ?

GB-

75.00

Alan

which model would that be ?

Is that a mutual capacitance model ?

OK I bought 2 TV-7 D/U units and a Heath kit that was in great condition. All are mutual conductive ( ?) type testers.

Thanks for the info and web pages .

This is definately interesting stuff

I bought 3 in hopes one of them will be a keeper.

Thanks again !

ok now I had some time to see what these testers can do .

If anyone buys the Military model be sure to get the adapter for testing 12AX7,12AT7,12AU7 and the like . The Tester is the Hummer of testers but it was made in WWII and not specifically setup to do modern tubes without the adapter.

The Heathkit , as it ends up , is actually a modified version of the Weston 978 series of tube testers and can test the tubes associate with guitar amps .

Both of these were mutual conductance type testers and if I can find the adapter I think I will keep the military tester because it's small , cool looking and in the manual it says to smash it with an ax or torch it with a flame thrower in order to keep it out of the hands of the enemy ! Now how cool is that ?

How much do these things cost? I remember seeing one in vintage guitar that was like $700...definitely more than I'm willing to spend. Also, where can you find some of the above mentioned?

A few years ago I did quite a bit of research and ended up with a Jackson 648s. It's a great mutual conductance tester (better than emission test alone) that also tests for shorts. It doesn't have the cachet of the Hickock's, but it covers a guitarist's tube testing needs very well and is much less expensive than the Hickock's. I got mine off Ebay for around $70.

My thanks to Tone Lizard for the great education on tube testers: http://www.tone-lizard.com/Jackson648.html

Kevin

The TV7/DU you bought and the Hickok 533, 600 and 800 series tube testers are all very good. I recommend you send one of the TV7/DU's to Kara Chaffee for calibration. Her website is at

http://www.tubewizard.com.

In my experience most vintage testers are out of calibration, and give erroneous results. Kara can fix that for a very reasonable price.


FVB

"No matter what you plug into, you're going to sound like you" -- Robben Ford --

Steve at Angela Instruments has been selling tube testers and parts for years. He doesn't have as much stuff as he used to, but it's worth checking his site if you need a part, or even a tester. Angela Instruments