Tubs of Tubes

Dec 23 01:53 UTC 2007

A couple of weeks ago, I get a call from a guy whose website I m 
working on. He says he s at the Ann Arbor Reuse Center and they have 
two tubs full of vacuum tubes and do I know someone who might want them.

I say,  How much are they asking for them ?  Ten cents a piece,  he 
tells me. 

 How many are there ? I ask.  I d guess about two hundred,  he replies. 
 Well,  I say,  Tell them I ll give him 20 bucks for all of them. 

He tells them that I ll give them $20 for the lot. I hear some 
mumbling. He comes back on the line and says they re negotiating. After 
a minute or two, he says,  OK. You got them. How do I get to your house 
again ? 

I give him directions. In about 15 minutes, he pulls up to my house, 
gets out, opens the hatch, and pulls out two tubs and a cardboard box 
with vacuum tubes in them. He was off by at least 100%.

I counted the number of tubes in one of the tubs and came up with a 
count of 325. The second tub doesn't have quite as many, but my guess 
is that I now have more than 500 of them.

There s nothing really exotic, but I did find a couple of 6J6s. These 
are the tubes used for the single-tube transmitter I have been thinking 
about building. In one of the tubs, there was even a socket for the 6J6.

There are also a bunch of 6KS7s. According to the RCA tube manual, 
these tubes were often used as RF or IF amplifiers. That sounds like 
the beginning of a receiver project, doesn t it? :)

And, of course, there are a bunch of rectifiers to make a power supply. 
Now, all I have to find some cheap transformers. Anyone know a source 
for them?

response 2 of 3:

Dec 23 18:03 UTC 2007

Kiwanis rummage sale throws out lots of things with transformers in them -
receiver, boomboxes,....  We have a bag full of transfermers that we were
going to recycle (mixed in with motors).