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I may be amoung one of the first or at least youngest tube equipment buffs. This thread enden up making me think back a bit to the memory of tube testers in most drug stores and some dime stores, and of course Radio Shack. I too was born in the late 60's so I did start pretty young. I was thinking about the last time I could find a store tester easily anywhere I went and it must have been around 1981 or so. Even then I was buying 50's sets from all of these people who probably thought I was just some stupid kid wanting a tv bad enough to pay them for their aging junk. And thats what the 40's-40's stuff was at that time, JUNK.
That was good to me. I regularly found 30's-50's radios and old TV's for $5, or even better FREE.. Once I bought a 50's RCA portable. One of those space age metal things with the knobs on the side and a handle on top. The set had a couple of small issues and I remember bagging up all the tubes and getting Mom to drop me off at the drug store. No problem, in and out with my $2.89 purchase in no time. It seems like most of the testers I remember were like the ones pictured in post #10.
The testers along with the 8 Track tape vanished somewhere in the 1980's. I was overseas in the service during the late 80's and I remember thinking that quite a lot had changed in America since I had been gone.
Since then I drifted away from the hobby a time or two but whenever I did need to test some tubes the Mercury that started this thread was ALWAYS kept on the sales floor until the roof leaked and got it wet according to the store owner. I dont know how the meter needle got broken from rain. That probably happened when they moved it to the store room. The needle has not been pegged and broken and the meter still works, so that is good. A dab of super glue will fix that needle if I can get inside there. The pieces are floating around inside the meter face. Yes PIECES!! It broke in 3 I guess you would say because there are two pieces laying there. The loss of weight causes the meter to be quite a bit off in calibration so I need to do something there. If I can only get the initial setting rheostat working correctly...
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