On 4/17/2016 4:33 PM, DhiaDuit wrote:
On Sunday, April 17, 2016 at 1:48:00 PM UTC-5, G Cornelius wrote:
On 04/16/2016 04:00 AM, analogdial wrote:
Tubes last alot longer than paper and electrolytic capacitors.

Now there's a blanket statement if I ever heard one.

My experience with the tube era was that a power supply
would commonly have problems with either the rectifier
tube or the electrolytics.

Back then - as a teen, that is - I was a lot better at replacing
tubes and swapping out electrolytics than I was at anything
else, so take this with a grain of salt, but there did seem to
be a lot of tube failures. The tubes that ran hot in the
miniature tube versions of the All American Five radio - the
50C5 output tube and the 35W4 (?) rectifier - were the usual
suspects.

Nowadays tube radios, etc., seem to be showpieces and not
actually used, with those ancient capacitors continuing to
age while the tube filaments remain intact; so, today at
least, the old tubes last way longer than those ancient
capacitors!

George

P.S. The All American Five in my garage is still plugged in
and still works fine at almost 50 years of age. Likely had
a tube or two replaced over the years and little else.

Do you remember that many stores had tube testers and some of those stores sold tubes too? I reckymember them.

I'm old enough to remember those well. I had a beast Hallicrafters short
wave tube radio that I'd stay up much too late listening to. Good memories.