RadioGuy wrote:
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?

Because they were just so phenomenally cheap. Sweep tubes were plentiful
and inexpensive and compared with similar power output transmitting tubes
it was hard to justify the cost in a non-ruggedized installation.

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.

It was built to a pricepoint like everything else ever has been. A somewhat
higher pricepoint than the Swan gear, mind you, but it was not built without
design constraints.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."