Compare the price of 6146's and sweep tubes the time the T4X was on the
drawing board, and I bet you'll find your answer!
.....Dave
"RadioGuy" wrote in message
...
The thought came to me the other day whle thinking about the cost of
6JB6's
nearly $100 for a set; I paid $18.00 for a matched set of three at AES
back
in the 1970's and I got plenty of spares. Why did Drake use those cheap
ass
sweep tubes in their final instead of the old standard 6146 to begin with?

Sure, back then it seemed in vogue to use sweep tubes in amateur gear
(yea,
sure, Swan gear...) but as I recall, we thought that Drake was kinda
cheesy
to use those tubes anyway. I gonna stick my neck out and say Drake
engineering wasn't the end all that the youngsters think nowadays.

(Yes... I have a complete Drake station (including amplifier)---the whole
line-up in pristine, vitrually unused condition in crisp factory cartons
including accessories, catalogs and a handful of the right-angle
Switchcraft
microphone (black cap) and key (red cap) plugs that Drake originally
supplied not that PL-whatever. Original owner---me---so it's not sour
grapes.)

RG

Dave Edwards wrote in message
...
Compare the price of 6146's and sweep tubes the time the T4X was on the
drawing board, and I bet you'll find your answer!
....Dave
"RadioGuy" wrote in message
...
The thought came to me the other day whle thinking about the cost of
6JB6's
nearly $100 for a set; I paid $18.00 for a matched set of three at AES
back
in the 1970's and I got plenty of spares. Why did Drake use those cheap
ass
sweep tubes in their final instead of the old standard 6146 to begin
with?

Sure, back then it seemed in vogue to use sweep tubes in amateur gear
(yea,
sure, Swan gear...) but as I recall, we thought that Drake was kinda
cheesy
to use those tubes anyway. I gonna stick my neck out and say Drake
engineering wasn't the end all that the youngsters think nowadays.

I don't recall the 6146 was that expensive. We could find them at the
hamfest, surplus and they were routinely given away from one ham to
another... heck, Heathkit used them, Collins used them... (not to mention
the ham and commercial gear in the 60's) and to think that Drake had to use
a sweep tubes in gear that many of us thought was somewhat superior to
Collins. By the 1970's the 6146 was so plentiful that they really weren't
an issue. It was the sweep tube that turned many of us off---but then the
Drake name seemingly overshadowed whatever disappointment we had. Remember
how you hated to tune up from fear of destroying those things. Gee... I
remember those sweep tube CB amplifiers that fed the CB craze of the 70's.
What was it... 12 6DQ6's in parallel or something gosh...

RG

I don't recall the 6146 was that expensive. We could find them at the
hamfest, surplus and they were routinely given away from one ham to
another... heck,

What you say is true for a ham in need of just replacing a pair of =
tubes. But it would not have been true at all for Drake.

A company producing ham gear cannot depend on tubes found at a good =
price here and there. They have to place a contract with a tube =
manufacturer who can guarantee delivery in time and in the required =
quantities. Prices are then market prices, not surplus prices.

73

Antonio I0JX

Antonio Vernucci wrote in message
...
I don't recall the 6146 was that expensive. We could find them at the
hamfest, surplus and they were routinely given away from one ham to
another... heck,

What you say is true for a ham in need of just replacing a pair of tubes.
But it would not have been true at all for Drake.

A company producing ham gear cannot depend on tubes found at a good price
here and there. They have to place a contract with a tube manufacturer who
can guarantee delivery in time and in the required quantities. Prices are
then market prices, not surplus prices.

73

Antonio I0JX

Well, the tube (6146) was in constant production during Drakes operation
(about 30 years) so it would imply that they were very common and
cheap---practically every other amateur equipment manufacturer was using the
6146. Large numbers were used by the military and commercial services. My
gosh... if Heath was using them they certaintly couldn't have been that
prohibitive to design with. So it begs the question why Drake was using
them.

RG

I agree. There is little, IF ANY, correlation between the "consumer" price
of components and the commercial (manufacturers') pricing. Besides the
quantity discount, there are other factors: One is that Drake may have, and
probably did, buy other tube types from the same supplier (which may not
have been the tube manufacturer!) That can leverage prices downward on one,
a few, or all types. Other components come into play too, for different
tube types may not use the same sockets, and may require different designs
for stability, etc so that a particular tube might require, say, a more
expensive bypass capacitor (just an example). Then there might have been
power supply consideratons involving the different voltages/currents for the
different types. These decisions are made in the early stages of design,
and usually revolve around what is the cheapest way to achieve the desired
result. Even if, at a later date, experience factors dictate using a
different tube, I doubt that (in this discussion case) the cost/benefit
tradeoff would favor going to the 6146. In order to know whether Drake was
smart, we need to know all the decision factors and conditions at the time.
Of course, hindsight always has 20-20 vision.

In the good OLD tradition of Hamming, those who so desired could do their
own engineering redesign. Yank out the sweeps and associated
circuitry/components if you didn't like 'em and build out with 6146s.

73,
Dube K4DWW






"RadioGuy" wrote in message
...

Antonio Vernucci wrote in message
...
I don't recall the 6146 was that expensive. We could find them at the
hamfest, surplus and they were routinely given away from one ham to
another... heck,

What you say is true for a ham in need of just replacing a pair of tubes.
But it would not have been true at all for Drake.

A company producing ham gear cannot depend on tubes found at a good price
here and there. They have to place a contract with a tube manufacturer who
can guarantee delivery in time and in the required quantities. Prices are
then market prices, not surplus prices.

73

Antonio I0JX

Well, the tube (6146) was in constant production during Drakes operation
(about 30 years) so it would imply that they were very common and
cheap---practically every other amateur equipment manufacturer was using
the
6146. Large numbers were used by the military and commercial services.
My
gosh... if Heath was using them they certaintly couldn't have been that
prohibitive to design with. So it begs the question why Drake was using
them.

RG

You mentioned that Heathkit used 6146's in virtually all of their
gear. That is a valid statement, but they used 6GE5 sweep tubes in
the lower price-point HW-series monobanders, including the ones for
MARS/CAP. It was a purely a matter of economics, I think. Retail
price aside, there had to have been more manufacturing volume on the
sweep tubes, because just about every family had a TV set.

I now have a 4B-line, and also a bunch of HW-series rigs. The 6GE5's
are fairly inexpensive even today, compared to 6146A's or W's or the
later GE 6146B's that Heathikit blessed.

73,
Ted KX4OM

On Thu, 24 Mar 2005 00:37:15 GMT, "RadioGuy"
wrote:


Antonio Vernucci wrote in message
...
I don't recall the 6146 was that expensive. We could find them at the
hamfest, surplus and they were routinely given away from one ham to
another... heck,

What you say is true for a ham in need of just replacing a pair of tubes.
But it would not have been true at all for Drake.

A company producing ham gear cannot depend on tubes found at a good price
here and there. They have to place a contract with a tube manufacturer who
can guarantee delivery in time and in the required quantities. Prices are
then market prices, not surplus prices.

73

Antonio I0JX

Well, the tube (6146) was in constant production during Drakes operation
(about 30 years) so it would imply that they were very common and
cheap---practically every other amateur equipment manufacturer was using the
6146. Large numbers were used by the military and commercial services. My
gosh... if Heath was using them they certaintly couldn't have been that
prohibitive to design with. So it begs the question why Drake was using
them.

RG

Ted Bruce wrote in message
...
You mentioned that Heathkit used 6146's in virtually all of their
gear. That is a valid statement, but they used 6GE5 sweep tubes in
the lower price-point HW-series monobanders, including the ones for
MARS/CAP. It was a purely a matter of economics, I think. Retail
price aside, there had to have been more manufacturing volume on the
sweep tubes, because just about every family had a TV set.

I now have a 4B-line, and also a bunch of HW-series rigs. The 6GE5's
are fairly inexpensive even today, compared to 6146A's or W's or the
later GE 6146B's that Heathikit blessed.

73,
Ted KX4OM

Yup... for sure... I forgot about those monobanders. I even had one
myself---the HW-32A.

Well, you raise the question that's been on my mind for quite awhile---just
what was the production on the 6146? I don't have the slightest idea how to
find that tidbit. They were well in production before TV became
commonplace---maybe 10 years or so. Just what was the production figure on
the 6JB6? To be honest the 6JB6 doesn't sound like a common tube. I recall
the horizontal deflection amplifier tubes like the 6DQ5 and 6DQ6 but looking
in my 1961 RCA tube handbook I don't seen the 6JB6 listed.

I recall, Kenwood had 6146's in their TS-520, correct me if I'm wrong but
wasn't it a 6146 of Japanese production ( I remember they had the shiny
chrome finish on the metal surfaces that typified some of the Japanese
parts)?

RG

Hi, Gang

The 6146 was introduced by RCA in Jan 1952 QST (full page ad).
It was advertised as the big brother to the 2E26, which had been around
since about 1946.

73,
Ed Knobloch


RadioGuy wrote:
Well, you raise the question that's been on my mind for quite
awhile---just
what was the production on the 6146? I don't have the slightest idea how to
find that tidbit. They were well in production before TV became
commonplace---maybe 10 years or so.

On Sun, 27 Mar 2005 19:50:10 GMT, "RadioGuy"
wrote:

Ted Bruce wrote in message
.. .
You mentioned that Heathkit used 6146's in virtually all of their
gear. That is a valid statement, but they used 6GE5 sweep tubes in
the lower price-point HW-series monobanders, including the ones for
MARS/CAP. It was a purely a matter of economics, I think. Retail
price aside, there had to have been more manufacturing volume on the
sweep tubes, because just about every family had a TV set.

I now have a 4B-line, and also a bunch of HW-series rigs. The 6GE5's
are fairly inexpensive even today, compared to 6146A's or W's or the
later GE 6146B's that Heathikit blessed.

73,
Ted KX4OM

Yup... for sure... I forgot about those monobanders. I even had one
myself---the HW-32A.

Well, you raise the question that's been on my mind for quite awhile---just
what was the production on the 6146? I don't have the slightest idea how to
find that tidbit. They were well in production before TV became
commonplace---maybe 10 years or so. Just what was the production figure on
the 6JB6? To be honest the 6JB6 doesn't sound like a common tube. I recall
the horizontal deflection amplifier tubes like the 6DQ5 and 6DQ6 but looking
in my 1961 RCA tube handbook I don't seen the 6JB6 listed.

I recall, Kenwood had 6146's in their TS-520, correct me if I'm wrong but
wasn't it a 6146 of Japanese production ( I remember they had the shiny
chrome finish on the metal surfaces that typified some of the Japanese
parts)?

RG

You're right about the Kenwoods. I just sold a TS-530S that I bought
new in 1983, and it used 6146B's. It was rated at 220W PEP Input,
about 10% higher than the 6146/6146A rigs. I don't recall how the
finals looked. I opened the case only one time, to enable the WARC
bands. Boy, that was one fine radio! I used it for only 7 ARRL-log
pages worth of contacts, mostly some skeds with relatives and playing
around during contests. I kept it in a zipped up bag that you buy
pillows in. When I auctioned it, I packed it in the original double
box with the styrofoam inserts, and it looked brand new. I knew that
I would never be able to repair it myself, since it was a hybrid
mostly transistorized rig. So, I let it go, and bought an HW-101, and
got my Drake 4B line out of storage.

By the way, Glen Zook, K9STH is an authority on the 6146 family.
Check out his site at http://home.comcast.net/~k9sth/

Ted KX4OM

RadioGuy wrote:

Well, the tube (6146) was in constant production during Drakes operation
(about 30 years) so it would imply that they were very common and
cheap---practically every other amateur equipment manufacturer was using the
6146.

Not quite. Yaesu used sweep tubes widely as did Swan, WRL, National,
Heathkit (in some transceivers) and even Hallicrafters (in some
transceivers).

Large numbers were used by the military and commercial services. My
gosh... if Heath was using them they certaintly couldn't have been that
prohibitive to design with. So it begs the question why Drake was using
them.

They likely got really good prices on them. In addition, a pair of
6146's was good for 80-100w output. A pair of 6JB6's in the Drake T4-XC
was good for about 140w. Swan and WRL pushed a pair of other tubes to
even higher output.

Dave K8MN