I'm trying to research the range of years over which 5963's were produced.
5963's are computer-grade dual triodes, similar to 12AU7's but with cathodes designed to not lose emission when the tube is held in cutoff. They very often show up on the surplus market both NIB and in decade counter assemblies used by military/telecom/test equipment.
The earliest databook entry I see for the 5963 is 1956 (Sylvania). The earliest example I have with clear date code is 1959 production Stromberg-Carlson. Some older usenet posts indicate that RCA continued production up through the mid-late-Lasnerian 80's (this is roughly the same time frame through which Philips etc. continued producing
12AU7's).
If you have tubes or tube boxes with date codes, I'm interested in trying to match up manufacturer/brand with various production dates. Like all tubes it's possible that sometimes the brand name the tube was sold under is unrelated to the actual manufacturer (although I generally associate this practice with crappy consumer tubes I'm sure it also happened with some industrial types.)
If there are E. Europe/Russian/Chinese tubes being sold as 5963's today, I am generally NOT interested in these.
I.E. the cure for "sleeping sickness". Inimical to flip-flops.
I know I used them heavily in the '53 to '57 era. About 10 years ago I discovered my wife had thrown out my vacuum tube collection, along with a tube tester. I had plenty of them, in original cartons, along with such things as the 224a and UV199, even 201A with bayonet sockets!
--
"If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use
the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article. Click on
"show options" at the top of the article, then click on the
"Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson
More details at:
Also see
My valve (tube) data book from 1970 lists them as "Osbolete" by that date. Also manufactured, or re-badged, in the UK by Brimar, apparently.
I have a couple of cds full of old valve/tube manufacturers data somewhere, if I can lay my hands on them I'll take a look and let you know what I find.
--
Cheers,
Stan Barr stanb .at. dial .dot. pipex .dot. com
(Remove any digits from the addresses when mailing me.)
The future was never like this!
Though I don't know when they were first manufactured... that tube sure brings up some good memories. In the early to mid 1960's they were often avail used at very low prices and we'd use them in our ham radio modulators as the first stage. They worked great. Supposedly they were pulled from IBM mainframes after so many hours... but they still had plenty of life left in them. To this day I still have a few of them left
Poking around through the shelves last night, I also found it listed in the 1951 ARRL handbook.
The highest-numbered 59xx series industrial tube in that edition was
5964, so assuming:
The 59xx numbers were assigned sequentially
The ARRL handbook lags a year or so behind product announcement
then the beginning of production for the 5963 might be 1949 or 1950.
I also found some HP-labeled 5963's that I probably stripped from HP decimal counter modules 30 years ago. No apparent date codes. I'm guessing that HP was relabeling somebody else's tubes.
I seem to recall that 5963s and the ilk cost us about 10 cents each in the late '50s.
--
"If you want to post a followup via groups.google.com, don't use
the broken "Reply" link at the bottom of the article. Click on
"show options" at the top of the article, then click on the
"Reply" at the bottom of the article headers." - Keith Thompson
More details at:
Also see
In the '60s, so the folklore goes, a woman in Poughkeepsie NY called TJ Jr's office demanding that someone come out and fix her TV set. She had just paid big bucks to have it fixed and it was out again. No explanation would convince her that IBM didn't make TV sets nor service them. Finally they sent someone out just as a PR measure. Yep, the service guy had used IBM branded tubes to fix her set. She was adamant that IBM fix their problem. They did, then went looking for the moonlighting service tech. ;-)
"Sleeping sickness," which also happens when B+ is applied with no filament.
I used a ton of 5963s in various applications, wherever there was a need for long period hold-off. I had an Exact waveform synthesizer that had 156 of 'em in the box! My own tests showed that a 5963 would survive in that application well, while any analog circuit tube variant of the 12AU7 would die off in short order if exposed to long period cut-off.
The first time I saw the 5963 in an RCA catalog was 1956, and they were marketed for VT digital computers, mostly, such as the UNIVAC. NORAD used these by the boxcar full in their early UNIVACs that were used in the NORAD system in the '50s through the '70s. Many of the used 5963s on the market now are probably part-outs from the old NORAD machines, which would occupy large buildings and need 100s of tons of refrigeration to cool.
5963s are NOT good tubes for audio or RF, I've found. Their curve, while good for switch and flip-flop applications, is curiously non-linear in the middle.
Bob, are you sure "Sleeping sickness" also occurs when B+ is applied without "filament" power? I never heard of that before, although that clearly doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Considering that this effect is not often spoken about, a reference explaining the mechanism would be nice to have? There has been plenty written about the garden variety of "Sleeping sickness", it is strange that little has apparently been written about this problem. If the effect does actually exist, does it affect the cathode in the same way as the "Sleeping sickness" caused by extended cutoff, or might it be related to the so called "cathode striping" non problem that audiophools worry so much about?
Interesting, you must have been a precocious reader, I thought you were just born some time around 1956?
Are you sure the NORAD computers were built by UNIVAC, I thought IBM built the large building sized NORAD computers?
That's good to know, it's probably why audiophools like the computer tubes.
It doesn't quite work that way. The non-linearity causes some pretty awful third harmonic garbage. I use 5963 as relay drivers in Leslie organ speakers, where they work forever. Changing one over to the voltage stage driving the 6550s creates aural havoc. Since most gee-tawr fans are deaf, maybe it'd sound good to them! I've also noted a tendency toward low Gm on 5963s vis à vis 12AU7s and their industrial AF/RF counterparts, like the 5814 and 6003.
On Tue, 16 May 2006 16:34:51 -0500, snipped-for-privacy@rcn.com (John Byrns) wrote:
Yes, it does! I witnessed this happen one time which resulted in an supervisor earning a little unpaid vacation time.
Old multiplex equipment associated with Types J, K and L carrier systems used by AT&T's various companies built in the '40s and '50s used basically two tubes...the 311B triode, and the 310A sharp cutoff pentode, essentially a five prong, 5 V filament 6C6, for anything below the mastergroup MUX level. Above that, the 404A (basically a 5V
6AK5) and the 417A single triode were used for mastergroup gain and stacking. One day, a migration to IC-based equipment on another floor occurred in our office, the largest carrier office in the US, rendering an entire floor's worth of antique channel modems, group demods, supergroup demods and all associated equipment such as carrier supplies to be relegated to "spare" status. A transmission man working that floor, trying to earn a few "brownie" points, disconnected all the -24V filament battery at the BDFB to all this gear. Laziness and timidity precluded him from removing the +130 and
+315 plate supplies. Thus, over 750 311B and 310A tubes were left in situ with their usual B+ on the plates and cold filaments.
About three months later, a surge in traffic demand prompted the circuit provision bureau to reassign new multiplex facilities to this equipment, and within a short lead time. When such work happens, the "circuit order" worker tests the gear both directions, sets levels as appropriate and checks for basic transmission impediments. In this case, the equipment didn't pass tone anywhere and wouldn't mod or demod anything at all, and a trip to the BDFB found boxes of 1 1/3 amp grasshopper fuses all placed neatly on the floor in front of the fuse bay. After replacing all the filament supply fuses, the equipment still failed, but some of it would pass modulated/demodulated signal, but at bad levels and with not nearly enough gain to meet specifications. After some checking, they called me down to try to figure what happened.
Western Electric gear from that era used an "in service" tube test regimen that looked basically at plate and filament current and "filament activity" (an old term that really meant "cathode activity" in anything other than direct heated tubes.) The in service tests showed acceptable filament current, but the plate current was either gone or very weak. In cases where there was at least some plate current, dropping the filament current 10% wouldn't cause a dip in the plate current...odd. A trip to the Hickok Cardmatic (KS version, of course) showed all the tubes on the entire floor to be "dead" for Gm. That's when the "brownie" said, "Oh...well, I took all the filament fuses out of everything to save power. I reported it to my boss, and he put an attaboy in my folder." A little investigation proved this to be true, and the supervisor was given some time off for being an idiot. A look at the Bell System Practices relating to vacuum tubes specifically stated that at no time should any tube of any configuration, except for cold cathode tubes, be allowed to stand with B+ on any element without the filament being hot.
Some further investigation with the folks at the Littleton, CO WECO tube plant confirmed that running any tube with the plates energized and no filament will cause the same, or worse, symptoms as "sleeping sickness" generally attributed to having a tube run in cutoff for long periods of time. In short, what happens in either case of "sleeping sickness" is that the plate winds up acting as a getter, thus becoming unreceptive to electron reception from the cathode after being plated with contaminents within the envelope. That explained immediately why the tubes, while testing bad for Gm, tested good for cathode activity. This was further confirmed by the fact that newer tubes were still at least conducting something, while tubes that were some 30-40 years old were completely dead on test, although the records showed their last "in service" current test to be well within specs. Conversations with retiring engineers at the tube plant confirmed that no "real life" vacuum tube had a very good vacuum in it, and even if it had one, it would be partially destroyed during the initial aging process by gasification of the tungsten on the filament and thorium from the hot plates. That's why tubes have getters in them, after all. As the fellow told me, "You cut off electron flow, and that plate makes a really attractive getter...the higher the B+, the more it "gets!" Add to this that the cathode, grids and filaments are all at or near ground potential, and you see how this can happen to the plates.
In the final tally for this goof, over 350 310A tubes, at $150 a pop, and 200 some odd 311Bs, at $75 a pop, had to be replaced on an emergency basis. At the time, Western Electric was getting out of tube manufacturing altogether, and the assembly and aging lines for the old ST envelope tubes were out of commission while the equipment was being sold to Richardson Electronics. As it turned out, a canvass of toll offices across the country had to be done to mine every available 310A and 311B, even old "pulls" from retired equipment, to get the MUX gear back into service. As it was, the due date for the facility additions was jeopardized by over two months, and the carrier group responsible for the gear (ours) had to buy all new Richardson tubes for the offices which gave up their spares. Total cost of the fiasco: over $130,000. There was little solace in the fact that the removal of the filament battery saved about $500 in power costs. To add insult to injury, the equipment only carried the service for another six months before being finally retired and scrapped.
"Audiophools" worrying about "cathode stripping" has nothing whatever to do with "sleeping sickness." I've yet to see any "audiophool" who actually knows how a tube works, anyway. You have to expect this from people who refer to audio phenomina as "air," "stage," "detail," "crispness" and other assorted laughable terms.
dB
Sidebar: On that particular floor resided many old pieces of gear from the 1930s, including bays of voice order wire equipment associated with long gone J and K carrier systems. In them were rows of bayonet based 101D triodes and 201As, most dating from the 1930s, some from the '40s. All tested good when pulled after 45+ years of continuous service. I shudder to think what these old things would've brought today on fraudBay. The secret to long tube life at the phone company? Running filaments 10% below rated voltage and excellent quality elements. The Richardson replacements which came later were nowhere near the quality of any old WECO tube, and WECO tubes made in the early '80s were almost as bad.
Here is a link to cathode interface on a Tektronix related site. I recall the problem well since it occured at times even in tubes that were kept on. Showed up in the Tek 540 Series.
IMHO a lot of electronic music is full of awful third-harmonic garbage. Perhaps Warren is on to something. Either that, or my old-fashioned analog ears are acting up again.
--
/~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs)
\ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way.
X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855.
/ \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign!
Thanks for relating the most persuasive example I've ever read of this obscure phenomenon. I'm sure many of us envy your experience with the real WE tubes and equipment (I certainly do).
But Gee, dB, I know how a tube works, and I also know the meaning of "air", "stage", "detail", "crispness" and other assorted terms used by audio professionals to describe what one hears when critically listening to a sound system. They are more useful and descriptive than, "That sounds good", or "That stinks".
If you find these audio terms laughable, how do you deal with the Latin terms your doctors toss around? Does the term, "squamas cell carcinoma" cause you to roll on the floor, laughing your ass off? I mean, that gibberish couldn't possibly mean anything real, right?
Enjoy your life, dB. Get lots of "air" - air is good. And don't get "squamas cell carcinoma" - carcinoma is bad, whether you understand the terminology or not.
My only excuse is that my copy of Tube Lore is on order and hasn't arrived yet :-). If Ludwell Sibley's publications were available electronically (e.g. indexed by Google) I would have a far easier time searching out this stuff. As it is, my references consist largely of
50's and 60's era electronics books and catalogs, some of which I haven't really looked through in 20 or 30 years (if ever!). I have a very little bit of pre-war literature and books.
I'm guessing that the 5xxx industrial tubes were mostly registered in numerical order. But does the book give much guidance on who produced these tubes and when, who relabeled them, and when they stopped being produced?
I'm 90% certain that my 1959-date-code Stromberg Carlsons were actually made by Sylvania, just by physical comparison. And I'm pretty sure that my un-date-coded HP 5963's were made by RCA, probably in the very late
50's or very early 60's. Does Mr. Sibley's book provide any guidance in this area?
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.