bcowen
Headphoneus Supremus
Ah, finally someone older than me. But you only have me beat by a year.@bcowen - I have replaced the GE 6SN7 with a "birth year" RCA "Radiotron", it sounds mildly better (but recall this is not in my music system, it is in a PC that has two small monitor speakers where I record and mix.) The Lyr is working great, it will soon move to a proper music system. My reason for buying it was to compare the Schiit multibit card to a Schiit Modi into the same preamp.
Birth year, by the way, is 1957.
How do you resolder a tube? I have soldering irons of various power levels and real, deadly, lead-containing, solder. I'd love to make the Crosley useable, I actually live in the Cincinnati, Ohio environs. The Crosley tube would be a "hometown" tube, although I do not know if Crosley actually made them or outsourced them. Either way the name "Crosley" is revered in Cincinnati.
Crosley made some very nice components, but I don't think they ever actually made tubes. Likely OEM labeled for them by one of the big players.
Resoldering can be done in one of two ways: 1) quick and easy is to simply reheat each of the pins until the solder flows and add a little new solder. 2) is to heat the solder until it flows, and then use a solder sucker to totally remove the old solder and then replace with new. Many times the quick and easy way will work just fine, but it may not last as long without problems redeveloping as the second method. Keep the tube mostly horizontal (or with the pins very slightly higher than the other end) and capillary action will draw the solder up into the pin. I use a Weller at a 750 degree tip temp with a chisel shaped tip. It can probably be done with more or less heat, that's just what I've become accustomed to and it works fine for me. The 1950's era Russian tubes have a high incident rate of solder problems, but I've also run into it with several Tung Sols and a few Sylvanias.