[Boatanchors] 6146 vs 6146A vs 6146B or 6146W

[lee]

Your article frankly does not mean a hill of beans to me any longer.  It 
once did!  You keep rehashing Motorola and Collins who had other 
considerations in play during the period in which you speak.  I too have 
rebuilt a lot of equipment.  In fact I'll stack up my collection against 
anyone's including yours.  I have never had a problem using B tubes in a 
piece of equipment which originally came with A type tubes.  That said. 
Anyone can do anything they want with their equipment.  My experience with 
the B tubes taught me your article's warning is unwarranted when it comes to 
ham HF equipment.  I have used the B tubes too many times to fall for your 
theory or warning.  I have found out there is no reason to fear using B 
tubes in place of A tubes.  You have a better chance of finding a bad new 
resistor or capacitor then you will find having a problem using a B tube in 
an A tube socket.  The reason I brought all this up is because your article 
puts unwarranted fear into too many non informed hams minds.

As to why a manufacture built a tube a slightly different way for a 
particular manufacturer,  I can offer many reasons why this happened and it 
had nothing to do with operating the tube.  Why do some tubes have more then 
one nomenclature or have a 4 digit number rather then an alpha/numeric 
nomenclature?  There were a lot of reasons they did this which had nothing 
to do with their performance.  Sometimes it did and some times it did not.

Guys risk their transformers every day by reforming 50 year old 
electrolytics or continue to use old ones in their rigs which puts them at a 
much greater risk then a once in a zillion times of having a problem putting 
a B tube in an A tube socket.  The risk you mention is about as risky as 
using a solid state rig because during an atomic blast, the solid state rig 
might get put out of action where a tube rig would continue to perform.

Lee, w0vt



-----Original Message----- 
From: Glen Zook
Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2011 5:27 PM
To: boatanchors at mailman.qth.net ; lee
Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] 6146 vs 6146A vs 6146B or 6146W

Of course, you are entitled to your opinion.  Also, I have stated many 
times, as well in the article, that many people have not had any problems 
using the 6146B/8298A in equipment designed for the older tubes.