Tube Tester, or more likely a tube matcher.

It’s red, where’s Donnie???

I’m going way out on a limb here, home theater?

Looks interesting. Nice chassis finish.

Looks like a nice heater to me. Much prettier than the oil filled radiators.

I knew it! Gone completely, and totally mad~  [smiley=icqlite20.png]

A time machine? Close?

I really must be more careful with my DNA and RNA.

Tube Burner

Fuel injection for his Monty Carlo.

Not one to use a Holly, he decided to DIY it himself.

Or a new surround system. One of the two.

It is a tube tester that mimics the actual operating points of the Decware amplifiers.  Consider this... the simplest of tube testers only have about 200 volts, connect the grid to the cathode and run AC on the plate so that the tube becomes a diode.  It really only tells you if the tube works or not but nothing about how well or in what conditions and certainly not what it might sound like.  Sadly it takes a purpose built by audiophiles tube tester to actually test tubes in a meaningful way to audiophiles unless you can live with doing one at a time.

Our HickOK 539B doesn't have these issues but it can only test one tube at a time.  We have 2500 orders on our current build sheet.  That's around 8000 output tubes alone.

This tester was designed to hold the cathode above ground like the Decware amplifiers and have the same DC plate voltages so that we can weed out bad tubes that otherwise would show up two or three weeks into the game after the customer gets the amp.

The other problem with tube testers that the industry is using that retails tubes, is that they are not regulated so not only do wall voltages that fluctuate change the readings, but having one tube vs. two tubes or four tubes plugged in, all change the readings.  It insures that there is really no way any "matched" tubes that you purchase from a retailer actually match at the voltages and conditions your tube amp presents to them.

So this one maintains a stable reading no matter if you have one tube or all 24 tubes installed. The readings don't change as you remove and insert tubes.

This baby duplicates the conditions for the output tubes of all of our amplifiers and allows us to precision match them with confidence and in a timely manner in a way that can normally only happen in the actual amplifier itself..

All done : )

click to enlarge

The entire tube testing bench.  We can test any type of tube ten ways from Sunday on this bench, including listening to them and that includes rectifiers.  We use ZMF and LCD headphones and Tiny Radials with a sub.  Sources are digital and analogue.  Noise and microphonics testing down to -90dB.  Actual amplifier voltages used in all testing.  A lot of tubes don't make the grade.  The ones that do go on to be tested in the actual amplifiers with audio signals across the full bandwidth with complete distortion analysis and harmonics matching.  Despite all this data collection -- the process weeds out a few more than normal bad tubes but has no effect on the tube and even with 24 hours of burn-in a tube can have issues that take days or weeks to show up.  Anyway, this is how an audiophile tests tubes for audiophiles.

I see the vinyl. Where is the turntable? Hat off to you Steve by adding  a source categorie for tubes!

What you using for a sub?

John