Got a stash of old tubes, anything interesting?

[cminor9]

I recently obtained a bunch of NOS tubes. Picked out the obvious goodies and set them aside.

A bunch of 7C5s, which I understand to be roughly equivalent to a 6V6 (managed to scavenge a few loctal bases for them too).

Any other sleepers in there?

Also got about a dozen or so 27s. Is there anything interesting I can do with those? My initial thought was to try and use them as an output stage for a funky guitar amp, but before I go there I wanted to see if there was a better use for them. Any thoughts?

[Leo_Gnardo]

Also got about a dozen or so 27s. Is there anything interesting I can do with those? My initial thought was to try and use them as an output stage for a funky guitar amp, but before I go there I wanted to see if there was a better use for them. Any thoughts?

From my days gazing through hi fi websites - most notably Audio Asylum - 27's were mentioned as being sort of the "holy grail" of preamp tubes, notably for microphone pres. Same for Western Electric 417. I've managed to get a sample of each but never built anything with them.

[tedmich]

a gain of 10 on the 27s? Probably much better suited for a mic preamp!
see here https://db.audioasylum.com/mhtml/m.h...3Danti%2Bcable

the Hifi guys suspect that a fancy CC heater was required to solve microphonic issues in this tube, I'd not try it in a combo!

[mozz]

80 is a 5Y3 with a different base. The 2A5 is a output tube. 7A5 is a output tube. The 83 is used in a lot of tube testers such as Hickok. The 6ab4 is a guitar preamp tube used by Premier. They are all useful. (says the guy with 10,000 tv tubes)

[cminor9]

Thanks folks for the ideas.

I'm kinda nervous about building stuff to use tubes that are hard to find anymore, but I guess with things being what they are even a 6V6 is gonna be hard to find.

I have to do some thinking and learning to do. Thus far I've built stuff using existing designs, I need to buff up my engineering skills to take advantage of some of the more obscure tubes.

[mozz]

TV tubes won't be hard to find. I use them all the time because i sort of get tired using regular old schematic. Sometimes it's a 1 to 1 replacement with a few tweaks, other times it is build from scratch.

[gui_tarzan]

I've got about 500 TV & Radio tubes I'd give you if you wanted them, then you'd never have to buy another one.