Wasn’t sure where to post the following, but this seems as good a spot as any. Anyone who patrols eBay may have noticed that a vendor in Taiwan has been pedaling a real treasure-trove of 6E5 eye tubes. To date, he has sold over a thousand of them! They are going for $20 a throw right now. I bought 10 of them when they were $10 each, and a friend in Georgia bought an equal number. These are Japanese Toyo tubes and, when operating properly, have a nice bright phosphor. There is a caveat, however. One of mine was defective right off. The glass envelope had become separated from the base in shipping (I thought). I inserted another in my Stromberg 694 and it worked fine — for a while. One day, it was dead. Sure enough, the envelope had separated from the tube’s base while in the radio! My friend had experienced similar problems with his batch of Toyo 6E5’s. The solution; super-glue the bases to the envelopes for starters. Even when firmly attached, the leads appear to have a tenuous electrical attachment to the base pins, at best. So here is where a good old fashioned solder pot and some quality liquid flux come in to play. Once re-soldered, these tubes should last a good long time.
.
