Mounting tubes horizontally

[sonolink]

I'm not too worried about heat actually. My box will have vents and one ECC83 only. My concern was more about finding a simple but sturdy mounting system that would allow easy tube replacement. Matador's idea looks simply great. Clever, sturdy and simple!

Thanks again for all the feedback, suggestions and help!
Cheers
Sono

 

[Tubetec]

The angle brackets I got from Lidl needed deburring before use by the way , or you could end up slicing your finger open , Im using them in such a way as they help sheild my output transformers from the mains transformer and mount the tube socket to also .

On very high end tube gear like the HP200CD oscillator the output transformer is shelided by several layers of steel built like stair steps into the chassis ,cored components at right angles to each other magnetically of course . All the caps are metal encased with discrete ground paths back to where they belong , that provides even more sheilding between the early stage tubes and the O/P transformer . In the modern day electrolytics are smaller so cant really be used for the sheilding effect .

 

[MidnightArrakis]

Hi guys,

I'd like to fit a tube inside a Hammond 1590BB for a guitar tube preamp pedal and would like to do it horizontally using a sub board plugged into the main board. I've seen some Format 500 pres use similar systems because of space, but I can't find anything like that anywhere

Any ideas/links please?

Cheers
Sono

Back during the mid-1970's I had bought a box full of "Right-Angle PCB-Mount" tube sockets from a dealer of TRW Components. These sockets were of an all-metal design and the PCB-pins came out of the "bottom" of the tube socket horizontally at different lengths and then were bent 90-degrees down towards the PCB. What also thrilled me about these particular tube sockets was that the design of the entire assembly not only included four mounting pins to the PCB (in addition to the tube socket pins), but they also included a spring-loaded twist-off shield!!! THEY WERE SO INCREDIBLY COOL TO USE IN 1U RACK-CHASSIS DESIGNS!!! My first project was building a clone of an "ALEMBIC" tube-based 1U bass-guitar pre-amplifier.

Even despite the 45+ years since I had purchased these unique PCB-Mount tube sockets, the image of them remains sharp within my mind. Every 7th "Blue Moon" or so, I become tempted to recreate the design of these TRW tube-sockets using my 3D Mechanical Design CAD-Modeling software and having some made!!! But, then.....I wonder just why would I do that??? How much of a market could there be for specific "Right-Angle PCB-Mount" tube sockets???

/

 

[iampoor1]

Back during the mid-1970's I had bought a box full of "Right-Angle PCB-Mount" tube sockets from a dealer of TRW Components. These sockets were of an all-metal design and the PCB-pins came out of the "bottom" of the tube socket horizontally at different lengths and then were bent 90-degrees down towards the PCB. What also thrilled me about these particular tube sockets was that the design of the entire assembly not only included four mounting pins to the PCB (in addition to the tube socket pins), but they also included a spring-loaded twist-off shield!!! THEY WERE SO INCREDIBLY COOL TO USE IN 1U RACK-CHASSIS DESIGNS!!! My first project was building a clone of an "ALEMBIC" tube-based 1U bass-guitar pre-amplifier.

Even despite the 45+ years since I had purchased these unique PCB-Mount tube sockets, the image of them remains sharp within my mind. Every 7th "Blue Moon" or so, I become tempted to recreate the design of these TRW tube-sockets using my 3D Mechanical Design CAD-Modeling software and having some made!!! But, then.....I wonder just why would I do that??? How much of a market could there be for specific "Right-Angle PCB-Mount" tube sockets???

/

Do you have any pircutres? I would be really interested in seeing the originals...sounds like a really cool part!

 

[thomasdf]

Maybe you can also use wires to a regular socket and clamp the tube with a mechanically decoupled holder of some sort, this would allow easy tube replaced in tiny space, as well as reduced microphonics or shocks to the tube, especially for a guitar pedal that gets kicked around. Overkill ?

 

[Tubetec]

Ive seen those 90 degree pcb tube mounts you speak of , I have a couple of them on a board from a big old tube sine wave invertor I dismantled .
Its somewhere in a box now I cant get at ,
I will dig it out though and post pics .
A quick search found these , different to the metal ones .$7.50 each from pacifictv.ca

 

[Rob Flinn]

..some serious power tubes need to be oriented in a specific direction, no small-signal tubes that I know of needs this..

/Jakob E.

I have some sets of laboratory data books from GEC & Mullard etc that I got from an old retired man about 30 odd years ago. I'm fairly sure that the GEC book recommends a specific orientation when horizontally mounting KT66's

 

[Tubetec]

yes , theres is a specific way to mount horizontally that gives best support to the grid wires , if you dont get it right things start to sag eventually .
my guess is the copper wires that hold the grids want vertical orientation , the axis of the grids may also make a difference to susceptabillity to interference from the mains transformers field .

 

[tony hunt]

There are thought-provoking guides to the orientation of the KT77 kinkless tetrode in the General Electric Corporation of England / Osram Marconi data sheets.

Advice for orientation is made when more than one valve is mounted, side by side.

Plagiarized text from the enclosed pdf data sheet excerpt:
- a pair of valves mounted horizontally > 9cm centres apart and keyways vertical
- a pair of valves mounted vertically > 9cm centres apart and keyways aligned along the axis of the centres.

But I have never seen such spacing on any of the KT77 amplifiers that I serviced. Mostly quads of KT77 were mounted much closer at half the recommended distance.

 

[rmburrow]

Been running a hot 6X4 in a power supply horizontally for years without any problem.

As far as mechanics, I mntd the socket onto a piece of aluminum angle.

You are lucky with that 6X4 mounted horizontally. Hope the 6X4 was the W version (JAN or military rated). Plate to cathode short would be bad news. Some radio transmitters horizontally mounted EL34's (audio driver), 6L6, 2E26 (audio or RF driver); electrode sag with these power tubes was a constant problem. The low level preamp tubes probably tolerate horizontal mounting much better.