The AM Forum

As requested by Don, the tube re-branding racket from July '56 Radio and Television News (Page 1 of 3)

Page 2:

And the final page:

Following that article, they ran periodic pleas for tubes in subsequent issues.

Some companies were offering 5¢ each for any and all old tubes.  And those were 1956 cents.  I recall one of the ads asking for tubes anywhere you could find them. "Dig 'em up out of the garden" the ad said.  Their goal was to eliminate all loose tubes, new and used, regardless of condition, that were not actually installed in equipment or sitting brand new unsold on the shelves in stores. 

I can imagine how many good tubes were destroyed in the process.  Since they were willing to take any tube regardless of condition, I suspect a lot of rare and obsolete numbers, including tubes with the old globe shaped envelope, ended up at the crusher.

Just my opinion, but I suspect this "problem" was highly exaggerated.  So they caught those guys in Boston, and maybe one or two other rebranders were in operation, but I can't imagine it being as widespread as the article implied.  My impression at the time was that the rebranded tubes were allegedly being sold directly to individual customers as new tubes.  I can't see how this racket could have been a highly profitable enterprise, considering the amount of work necessary to collect, process and resell the tubes.  And wouldn't the manufacturers have very quickly become suspicious when one or two individuals began returning thousands of "defective" tubes for replacement?  It would have to have taken a tremendous quantity of bogus tubes to make such an operation worthwhile, since the good replacements would have had to be marketed and re-sold before any money was made, and radio tubes never were exactly Rolex watches. 

At the time a lot of WW2 material was still lying about plentifully, and the throw-away attitude was not as developed as it is to-day. I suspect one of the aims of this campaign was simply to get used and surplus tubes off the market and out of the competition.


Rodger, thanks for posting the scans.

Someone in stir for 20 years wouldn't want that dude for a cellmate...

Ah,  but you have to love the good old days where the criminal wore a fairly formal hat for his mug shot.

Don,  I agree with you that I think the problem was overblown.  I guess the corporate security force needed something else to do when they weren't busy chasing Reds.

I guess someone could make some money now by having a stamp made up with the Amperex bugle boy on it and selling fake bugle boy tubes to the audiophiles on ebay.  I have a couple of older Tektronix true dual beam scopes that have both distributed vertical amps populated with bugle boys.

Rodger

LOL,  I like the "mobile" D 104 in the pic on the last page.  ;D