Salvaging tube sockets etc

[JohnH]

Does anyone have any idea whether it's possible (or even advisable) to salvage old sockets? Or how to clean them?

I have a friend who has an incredible ability to find old electronics, and he occasionally finds old tvs and radios and drops them off to me.

I had been using them for various art projects, but then it occurred to me yesterday that they actually have a lot of cool stuff in them. I don't know enough about transformers to worry about pulling those, but this tv alone has 9 x 7 pin, 2 x 8 pin, and 2 x 9 pin sockets.

[Simon Barden]

Valve TVs normally pushed the valves a lot more, with much higher voltages than you'd ever get in a valve guitar amp, so all the components in them will have got hotter and had a harder life.

Then there's the effects of age and corrosion on the springiness of the contacts in the bases. You could cut the base of an old 12AX7 (or similar) spray in contact cleaner and do multiple inserts and withdrawal to get the contacts as clean as possible, and you should be able to use the base to do some continuity and resistance testing. But your 12Ax7 series preamp valves are 9-pin, and your standard output valves are 8-pin and larger, so you will get a maximum of 4 useable bases from that TV, even allowing the base size and pin count match your requirements.

The base materials themselves should be fine, but you can visually look for signs of overheating or cracking and avoid any that look dodgy.

Then there are the extra things that you'd probably want to use in a valve amp, such as integrated shields for preamps, and spring clips to hold in the power amp valves. You may find some bases like that in your sets, but I can't see more than 2 possibles on that TV and they look to be on 7-pin bases you don't want.

It's one of those big 'you are never really going to know until you test each one' scenarios.

Personally I'd start off a new amp build with new bases so you know where you are. They aren't high cost items and you'll spend far more on decent valves to fit in them, so you might as well fit them into bases of a known good quality.

[DrNomis_44]

I've had some good success with using valve sockets I've salvaged from old bits of gear in the past, so it is indeed doable, you just have to make sure that the sockets are in reasonably good condition, some of the sockets in that old TV look to be 9-pin types, and I think I can see at least a couple of 8-pin (octal) sockets as well, what I would do is remove them from the chassis, examine them under a magnifier to see if there's anything obvious wrong with it, and then de-solder all the wires and component pigtails and etc from all the solder-lugs, you can use some 3mm wide solder wick to soak-up the remaining solder.

[JohnH]

Ok, cool. Thanks guys!

I should have pointed out that I wasn't planning to use them for the amp build, because I want to remove any possible sources of error (to hopefully keep trouble shooting to a minimum). I guess I was thinking more for tube driven pedal builds, or something similar.

[Marcel]

Recycling old electronics is much like trying to win the lottery. Sometimes you win, but often you don't.

If I'm building something I use new where I can. If I do use a recycled part I test it with every method I have at my disposal (which after +40y in the industry I have quite a few, and is way more than just a multi-meter.)

Restoring old gear is a different matter. You replace everything that is broken or dodgy. Sadly some items can defeat you such as the circa 1950's rack mount tube based military grade shortwave radio receiver I picked up in the late '90's, which sits gathering cobwebs due power supply complications, and a major lack of time. I took it on thinking it would be an easy fix but tinkering by previous "tech's" has elevated the difficulty level to stratospheric levels, which is a shame as it is truly a fine work of electro/mechanical art as a device ...

[DrNomis_44]

I remember buying a piece of old radio gear from the local dump shop here in Darwin, I decided to rat it for parts and scored myself three nice 9-pin valve sockets with shields, the insulation they used was white PTFE (Polytetrafluroethylene), I also scored three nice 12AX7 tubes with silver anodes, and I think it also had a nice GE 6V6 valve as well.