Quote:
Originally Posted by Pete Deksnis
My feeling always was that it was new. Or, perhaps assembled from a pile of parts held in storage for years...?
|
I think there are two plausible explanations:
The datecode is a misprint and it should be 1954, or the tube was manufactured new in 1959. The 15GP22 is on price sheets well into the late 1960s and early 1970s. Warehousing a bunch of product is expensive. It's possible that RCA kepts parts around to "build" new 15GP22s on demand for a while. They wouldn't be the first company to do something like that...
If it was a rebuild you'd expect to see a label saying that the envelope was reused and the tube was rebuild. I've seen an RCA rebuilt 15G with such a label, and I've never seen a rebuilt tube without a label clearly identifying it as such.
I think your gut feeling is right Pete.