Hello,

I just bought a Saba 100/125T at a garage sale. When I opened it up there was no tube in the EABC 80 socket. I had one in my small stock of spares but the socket in the Saba was too small in diameter to accept it. The tube base is original to the radio.

Looking for advice as to the possible existance of two base sizes for this tube.

Thank you

Hi

EABC80 is same as 6AK8, 9 pin min tube. Except for a different height 6T8 should also work.

What do you see different?

...careful. Saba chassis often contained an 'empty tube socket' that is actually a set of test points for alignment. Makes it look like there's a tube missing, and to further confuse things, it is located somewhere in the vicinity of the EABC80 (because the alignment points in it are derived from the EABC80's detector functions). This 'test' socket, however, is a 7-pin socket, so a 9-pin EABC80 won't fit in it...Also, if this radio is FM stereo (MPX) capable, there will be another socket for the MPX decoder...
...and no, there weren't different sizes for the EABC80. As previously stated, it's a standard 9-pin miniature ('Novar') basing and will fit in any normal 9-pin miniature tube socket...

For clarificatiion, the standard 9-pin miniature socket is known as 'Noval' while the larger 9-pin socket such as used by the 7868 audio tube (and many TV types) are called 'Novar'.

Dave

Thank you very much guys,

You are right, the empty socket was indeed a 7 pin "test socket". As was stated, it was in a position that fooled me into thinking it was the EABC 80 socket but after your responses, I went back, actually counted the tubes and took the metal shield off the adjacent tube and there was the 80.

Would it help to say I am learning, slowly?

This is the first "high end" set I have bought and when I saw the empty socket I jumped to the wrong conclusion.

Thanks again.

Don't feel bad. You can have worked with this stuff for over 20 years, and still do that kind of stuff once in a while. Brain farts happen, no matter what your level of training.

Hopefully, experience will keep you from massively screwing things up as a result of having the brain fart. That is, if it looks too fantastically difficult to do, it's probably wrong!

Regards,
Gordon.