Any Idea How These Adapters Were Made?

[rp]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ONE-NEW-Tube-ad ... 43b1e7342e

I have a pcb 9 pin base and tried fitting into my amphenol thingy that is the same as the octal top part of this ebay adapter, but it's not even close to fitting. How'd he do it? Maybe he made a custom top plate, somehow I doubt it?

4 of these would allow me to really play around with the 5C8, try 12AY7s, 5751s, 12AX7s, and get to try 9 pins w/ grid leak. But man 4 would be $68 - Though not unreasonable given the watchmaker effort involved making it. The modern world is strange, anything you want is out there.

[Dingleberry]

Cheap and simple solution:

1. Salvage octal tube base from old dead tube (or buy an Amphenol octal connector if you want to spend a little more),
2. Get a nine pin tube socket.
3. Carefully wire those together and really make sure you are certain what pin goes to where.
4. Seal the whole thing with black epoxy glue.

To me those "official" adapters also look like sealed in epoxy rather than they have a special top plate. If you look carefully you can see how the light reflects and reveals the secret.

-T

[martin manning]

My guess is the top plate is a special-made part. Maybe these $2 octal bases (bottom of the page) would help? http://www.hoffmanamps.com/MyStore/perl ... =428610076

[rp]

Those "official" adapters look like sealed in epoxy to me rather than they have a special top plate.

Hells yeh! Good call, TAG's great!

And Martin you just saved me $20 I was going to order more expensive ones from eBay.

[Gibsonman63]

http://www.hoffmanamps.com/MyStore/perl ... =444373046

Hoffman has the bases as part of thier Bias checker kit. I believe you can order the bases separately.

[martin manning]

A recollection of the bias checker kit is what led me to look for the octal bases at Hoffman. Looks the the bits would be fine for the octal-to-octal adapter and save a lot of fiddling. There are on-line assembly instructions that give a good idea of how it goes together, with some good tips.

[Cameron]

My guess is the top plate is a special-made part. Maybe these $2 octal bases (bottom of the page) would help? http://www.hoffmanamps.com/MyStore/perl ... =428610076

No top plate ..its epoxy

[Andy Le Blanc]

Clean the lead out of an old socket is pain in the butt, and wear safety glasses when you clean out the old glass and glue if your recycling.
That auto epoxy to fill the cup after, I'd pre wrap the top socket with something to prevent any over spill from getting on it.

[martin manning]

Looks like the ceramic socket's terminals are passing through punched slots to me...

[ampdoc1]

It looks to me like epoxy was injected and a little of the terminal is showing above the pour.

This doohicky is built a lot like the Soldano hot mods I manufactured in the '90s. I'll bet there is also a small circuit board inside routing the pins to the correct positions.

a'doc1

[rp]

It looks to me like epoxy was injected and a little of the terminal is showing above the pour.

To me too, it's very shiny and smooth looking on top and I agree, but how the hell he got the epoxy in there so nice is a mystery. I was thinking about drilling / expanding the hole down the middle of the noval putting the epoxy in a syringe and hoping for the best. Bet it doesn't want to come out of the syringe easy. Ought to keep me busy. Remind me to wear some gloves. If I wind up gluing my finger to my nose I'll post picts.

This doohicky is built a lot like the Soldano hot mods I manufactured in the '90s. I'll bet there is also a small circuit board inside routing the pins to the correct positions. a'doc1

That would sure help with the watchmaker part of the task, I guess the Chinese guy isn't unreasonable after all as he has some investment into it, except he's making dollars and spending yuan on $5 a day labor, but then so is Nike and I'm wearing those.

I'm kind of looking forward to this but might be a while till I get it all together.

[martin manning]

OK, some look potted (the ones where the poured stuff is flush with the top rim of the octal base). The one I enlarged does not (to me).

If I were doing this, for the noval-octal I think I'd find somebody with a lathe to make an adapter flange out of plastic.

[soma_hero]

Take your ceramic socket and solder wire leads to each pin. Now, using those octal base you can buy from hoffman or CE, route the wires into the correct pins on the octal base.

Now solder from the pin side of the Octal base. The pins are hollow so you can fill them up with solder from either side, probably easier to do from the pin side than trying to get your iron down in between the octal base and ceramic socket. Then fill the deal up with casting epoxy.

I make connectors to go between chassis like this using those octal bases.

[Reeltarded]

That is a great idea right there.

[ampdoc1]

MMmm!

Didn't really consider getting the epoxy into that shell! The Hot Mods used a base that had a 1/4" hole in the middle that allowed the epoxy to be filled easily from the top, once the unit was assembled,


This could be trickier than it looks at first glance. From an assembly point of view, Martin's description would make better sense. Put connectors in the base, fill the epoxy, then insert that top piece onto the connector.