Eccleston/ Tennant Console at Doctor Who Experience

[whovian-almighty]

After looking at the console I think I've found a piece! not sure if I'm right but this part high lighted red looks like a radiator valve, probably an idea to use if one is making this console  

[timegalaxy5]

Hey, does this help, was lookin at the picture and noticed a tube-preamp, its for music equipment and amps, I knew that because my dad makes music and he sometimes gives me em, if they are broken or no good,


\
Hope this helps
TG5

[galacticprobe]

YES! The old vacuum tubes, which is the all-encompassing name for these things. They were used for diodes, pre-amps and amps, oscillators, and many other uses depending on the bits that were put inside them: a cathode, a filament (to heat the cathode so it would "boil" off electrons for current flow - sometimes the filament and cathode were one and the same), a plate (to attract the 'trons flowing from the cathode), and any number of "grids" to control and determine the tube's function. (I used to teach Tube Theory in the Coast Guard's Electronics School.) These were also known as "valves" in some parts of the planet. The equipment I worked on while in the US Coast Guard was full of those tubes: radios (transmitters, receivers, and transceivers), radars, depth sounders, and a whole slew of others. Some of it is still in use.

Now, like with those old hard drive hubs I missed out on back in '95, I wish I'd grabbed those tubes out of the equipment that was being replaced with upgraded, solid-state versions (again in the mid '90s to the early 2000s - before news of the New Series even reached this side of the pond).

I might still have one or two lying about the house from my scavenging days when I had to find parts to keep my equipment operating and parts were scarce. (Time to raid those places that aren't quite antique or second-hand shops, but are a thing somewhere in between the two... the kind where you find junked electronics. You know what I mean? I have been in those places before, and yes, they do smell like armpits. So be careful when you go to them!)

You can probably find some on ebay, but the shipping would probably cost more than the tube.

Dino.

[galacticprobe]

There is at least one other of these tubes on the console frame as well:


There may be more scattered about the frame, so I'll be taking a closer look at these photos.

Also, today while the wife had be out for walkies, we went through an antique shop and I found one of those old Singer sewing machines with its case, and the case had its handle intact. Sadly the price they wanted for it was way too much for me just to get the handle. (The case was also in good shape, but the machine was really bad off.) But I think I can throw a reasonable facsimile of a handle together from bits from a craft store. I'll have to plan this one carefully, unless I get lucky and find some junked cases, or a reasonably priced one or two on ebay.

Dino.

[galacticprobe]

Okay... I've closely scrutinized every photo we've got on this console (many very detailed ones thanks to kingpin, and peterdalek's Photobucket links on Page 1), and I haven't been able to see any other vacuum tubes other than the two TG5 and I have pointed out.

I think it was during Eccleston's tenure when there was one next to the Demat Lever (on the lever's side near the housing's front corner), but that one vanished early on. It probably kept getting broken off when the lever was pulled and thus relocated, maybe to the panel that TG5 spotted it on. That one on the top of the console frame looks like it's been there for a long while, probably originally there?

Anyway, so far the count stands at two tubes.

Dino.

[timegalaxy5]

HM, just two? well I guess for me that means I only need one more then
well I know you looked over them GalacticProbe, but I will look over them as well, just like Santa checks his lists twice  

'RE-EDITS' (looks over all pictures again...and one more time...and just again...."sigh") well, i hate to say it, but there is only two...

TG5

[galacticprobe]

TG5, it never hurts to have a second set of eyes (or a third set) to look something over. And having only two of these tubes on the console can be a good thing. I don't know how easy they are to find these days with everything being "black box" built. And unless you find an old radio or telly in a junk shop I have no idea how much a new tube would cost. (Some of the ones we had to order for my equipment were rather expensive, and they weren't anything special: diode tubes and amps or pre-amps. This was also about 8 years ago at the earliest.)

Stay away from the gas-filled voltage regulator tubes, though. They might look the same on the outside, but whereas if you accidentally break a vacuum tube, all you have to do is clean up a mess. If you break a gas-filled voltage regulator tube, you're dealing with radioactive material clean-up. Nothing that would make you age rapidly or grow a third arm (though sometimes I wish I had that third arm), but it would be dangerous and you could get rather ill from it: not radiation poisoning, just ill.

Dino.

[wayne venomous]

You'd be surprised how cheap vacuum tubes or valves are these days. Thanks to valve guitar amps, they can be had for as low as £2 as there's lots of dodgy Chinese valves knocking around Ebay or amp websites. Plus, if you know any guitarists with valve amps, they'll always have burned-out ones!

[Rassilons Rod]

4 years ago, it cost me 250€ to retube my MesaBoogie Mk IV.

That's 5 small tubes and 4 large ones... Not cheap. If I still had my old one's I'd send em to you.

[timegalaxy5]

hmm, I think it depends on what kind you get too, I mean, there are really small ones, then there are really big ones...got to my dads earlier today and he pulled out a little container out of the closet and it had three of them in it  I was like, "O my Gosh, thankssss!!!" of course smiles on my face, ha

TG5

[galacticprobe]

Well, with the US decommissioning all of its LORAN sites (which, IMHO I still think is a huge mistake, but then being a Coastie and a member of the military service who maintained and manned them, I'm partial), I'll have to talk - again - to my buddies who are pulling out the old equipment. Aside from LORAN using large rheostats, they also used lots of those vacuum tubes.

I just might get a little lucky after all! (Well, here's to hoping, anyway.

Dino.

[galacticprobe]

hmm, I think it depends on what kind you get too, I mean, there are really small ones, then there are really big ones...

I just remembered, some of those LORAN tubes are as large as the dust bin one would find in a bathroom (and they were water cooled, believe it or not!). I remember them warning us, "If you ever see a drip coming from the piping, NEVER touch it with your fingers to wipe it away! That water has over 40,000 volts on it!" Yeah: secure the transmitter, then the pump, and then once the charge was grounded fix the leak.

Other tubes were no larger than the average index finger from tip to second joint, or your thumb, which is what looks like the size of the tubes are on this console.

Dino.

[Rassilons Rod]

The Mesa MK IV uses 4 6L6-GC tubes and 5 12AX7, if that helps

[galacticprobe]

It's been so long since I've worked with them, I can't remember what those numbers mean, though that 12AX7 is very familiar. (And to think that 20 years ago, I could have told you what kind of tube it was just by the number. It's amazing what the ravages of time can do. )

Dino.

[Rassilons Rod]

I believe the small ones (12AX7) are pre-amp tubes and the large ones (6L6) are power tubes. Don't ask me more than that cos don't know

But... The ones in the console look about 12AX7 size to me. They have this sharper point (if I'm not mistaken) that isn't there on the larger tubes.