I was not there, Gandalf. This was before even my time.
this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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Sylvania now: "Just throw that piece of shit in the trash and buy a new one"
I worked for Sylvania about 15-20 years ago as they were swirling the drain and trying to adapt to LED lighting. Lots of cool old equipment and facilities but it felt like whoever was steering the ship (Osram) was asleep at the wheel. The way the company handled the next 15 years proved that was true.
I worked at a grocery store that still had one of these in the mid 90s. It had been there since the 60s but no one who worked there still knew how to use it.
I remember when the local Safeway had one of these! I'm pretty sure that was in the '70s, though. It's just slightly possible that I might be old.
OK, thought I was misremembering. Yes, our 70's Safeway had one.
Found an EMC Model 213 tube tester at a thrift shop this summer. It's a cute little portable unit in a fabric covered hard case, from about the early 60s. Useless without the chart (typeset on a literal typewriter) that tells you how to set the row of 12 switches & three knobs that dial in the proper test for each type of tube. Luckily I found a scan online!
Useless without the chart
And without a tube TV.
I've got plenty of vacuum tubes to test...if it still works. Who tests the tester?
Unfortunately, there's only one port to test with.
The worst part was when the little stickers you put on the tubes to remember which went where fell off.
omg, usually you could just swap in a working one from another TV/radio. if it work you knew which one to buy. pins match, good
Just because the pins matched didn't mean the tubes were the same. Also, remember that the whole point was to take all the tubes out and take them to the store where this tester was to figure out which tube was bad. So if you didn't know where a tube went, swapping with another set (if you happened to have one) wasn't helpful because if was more likely to be a good tube.
was ten. m&d let me try anything. didn't work it didn't work
I remember one of these being at the grocery store as a kid. I didn't know at the time what it was for, but it had knobs and switches to play with.
Isn’t that what the instructions are for?
The instructions were probably more helpful for someone who knew what these tubes were. I was probably about 6 at this point, hadn"t been actively involved in much TV repair by this time, and I guess I somehow didn't pick up enough clues from the context of the instructions to put it all together before just leaping into playing with the dials and switches. You know, like a kid
I actually have a similar model for testing audio tubes. I have several 100 watt amplifier heads for my guitars and a few more home built amps for both guitar and listening audio. I even have several tube preamps I’ve designed with one or two tubes.
Such a cool era of technology to me.
I bet there’s somebody somewhere that knows why the three bottom left sockets are red.
Finding a less potato image of this device on Google, the red sockets are not testing sockets but "pin straighteners"
You can test the tubes yourself, it's called tubing. So YouTube
haven't seen one in use for at least 20 years. 60, 70s mainly
much smaller now. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=tube+tester
I'd love to have this. They're hard to find.