A "What the..." moment

[ChrisW6ATV]

When I started testing the tubes from my CT-100, I found this one, the 6CD6 horizontal output:




I had heard that Radio Shack relabeled other brands for their "Lifetime" tubes, but this one was a bit unusual anyway, I thought. Then, I couldn't find the number anywhere on the tube, until I found this dim label (enhanced here):




Okay... It is not a 6CD6 after all, though it tests good as one. There was something rattling around in the base of the tube, so I decided to try to remove it and here is how it looked:




No wonder the Tung-Sol label was so obvious. It wasn't the original base at all! (The rattling was a loose blob of solder in there.) I cleaned up the pins, and now I have a good spare 6JE6 for my newer color roundie sets (though it is missing a few of the pins):




I wonder why someone would have gone to all that trouble. Do you suppose 6CD6s were either hard to find, or more expensive at one point (maybe in the late 1960s or the '70s)? Certainly now, with all of the ham radio (and illegal CB radio) amplifiers that use the newer sweep tubes, 6JE6s are much more expensive than 6CD6s.