A new way to decorate the Christmas tree....

[drh4683]

This idea came to me while I was testing a 6LB6 this evening after admiring how nice they look when they glow. You can only see them when you're servicing the TV. Then it occured to me, why not make a string of vacuum tube christmas lights. This way, the tubes can be see seen all the time and they look great on the tree in a dim lit room.

I used all tubes that would be commonly found inside zenith color TV's. I used miniature tubes to limit power consumption. My first string uses 14 miniatures, tubes like the 6KT8, 6EJ7, 6HA5, 6GJ7. The typical zenith TV tubes. All the tubes are 6 volt, wired in parallel of course. I had the perfect wire, red and green striped telephone wire (christmas colors...). I wire wrapped the leads around the tube pins then touched solder on them. All the tubes I used were in my box of known bad tubes. The only reason I kept them was to see how many tubes I changed in the period of one year of TV servicing. The tubes are lit up at about 10 volts through my variac.

All the tree needs now are some ornaments, like resistors, capacitors and coils etc.

Just a wierd idea I had that I thought I'd share with fellow electronics enthusiasts.

Don't forget, the 6LB6 is the "Star" at the top of the tree!

Enjoy the Holidays-
Doug