Tubes, Tubes, Tubes

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Tubes are great and will never die, if you don't beleive me find out why....They just keep comming back.

Click on any picture below for a full size view.

The basic parts of a tube include the filament, cathode, grids, plate. Tubes can amplifiy signals greatly and without distortion. Basicly a small weak signal is hooked to the grid and a much larger signal is generated or controled by the output which is the plate. A power supply is needed to provide filament voltage, and plate voltage.

A more complecated tube diagram, called a Pentode, means 5 parts, has many uses as amplifier, mixer, oscillators and pre-amps.

The powerfull 572B transmitting tube, 2700v, 275ma, 600watts out. This one is considered one of the top of the line tubes manufactured in Russia by Svetlana.

The popular 811 transmitting tube, also found in guitar amps.

A variety of the 572 tubes aprox 600 watts each.

A classic high power audio tube. The EL34 by Svetlana features a gold plated grid and graphite coated screen grid for better power handling and longer life.

Another good tube. The EF86 is a very low noise audio pre-amp tube popular in Europe.

All tubes need a good power supply, this one is 2000volts.

This is a pair of 572B's in a Ham transmitter, 1000 watts output, running 2400volts at 500ma. This one is owned by Bruce N6THN.

What a nice pair of comercial transmitting tubes, the 4CX15,000A at 15,000 watts each you can't beat these babies for power. They draw about 5amps at 7000 volts. These keep many radio and TV stations on the air.

This one is going into a Ham Radio linear amp, nice huh. Notice the air cooling fins on the plate. It needs plenty of fins because it's a 4CX1600B, 1600watt tube.

The 4CX400 is a well known tube desired by many Ham's at 400 watts output.

What a tube linear looks like on a scope. A spectrum analisis of IMD, Inter Modulation Distortion, this shows 2nd order products down below the carrier by at least 35dbm which is cleaner than most transistors. This is the clasic two tone modulation test best shown on single side band.