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A few days ago I received the quad set of Chinese 572B tubes that I bought from Dave Crase, N2KNC. He listed them here on QTH.com as essentially new, stating that he tried them in his amplifier in place of the stock 811s and removed them after a very few hours becasue they gave no more power than the 811As..

I couldn't believe what he sent me. The four tubes were well packed in Chinese tube boxes, lots of padding, and then inside a large USPS Flat Rate box (I paid him extra postage to use the large USPS Flat Rate box so he could add extra packing materials. I also sent him fragile stickers to put on the box, which he did).

The package arrived with absolutely no evidence of rough treament. At first, everything look fine. Things went down hill from there. The red 572 B on one tube was significantly faded. Another tube had a rattle.

I put all four tubes in my brand new Ameritron AL811H in place of the stock 811As. The filaments of one tube didn't come on. DOA. I removed it, turned on the amp, keyed it up, and added some low level drive. NO OUTPUT. ZERO. NADA. NONE.I slowly advanced the drive up to 60W, the maximum allowed with three good tubes. NO OUTPUT. ZERO. NADA. NONE. .

N2KNC sold me a set of four DOA amplifier tubes. Not low output, not a bit flakey, but totally trashed.

He hasn't replied to my email where I told him I am going to take whatever legal and proper styeps are necessary to bet my money back, which I will. He did have one of his friends email me to tell me that I am incorrect--that N2KNC did not send me bad tubes. I, of course, ignored his email, and will continue to do so, and emails from any of N2KNC's other 'friends' (apparently, there were several guys involved).

I sent the info to Scott, and asked him to look into the matter, and am now filing this complaint.

After it was too late, I became suspicious. N2KNC emailed me>...'your tubes have shipped, if they become damaged please contact me and we will help you with the insurance claim'. A big red flag went up, but the tubes were already on the way. I am convinced that he knew the tubes are defectuve but hoped I would try to get the USPS to pay for them. Just ain't gonna happen.

I still have several avenues to pursue in this matter. Needless to say, I am very glad that I paid him with a USPS Money Order and not with PayPal.

Dave> When I was putting the tubes back in their boxes, I noticed some sort of
mild 'corrosion' on the base pins of all four of the tubes. They were sort
of mottled looking, and not bright and shiny like the pins on the new tubes
that came with my new amplifier. I guessed that the corrosion could be causing poor or no contact.

So, I used some fine grit sandpaper on all of the pins on all four tubes and
wiped them clean. After doing so, they looked a lot better. The tube with
the 'bad' filament lit up. However, the otherwise 'dead' tube was still dead
when I reinstalled the tubes in the amplifier. It still caused no output
when it was installed with the other tubes. I pulled it, and installed one
of my other new tubes in its place and the amplfier now has full output.

After some totally unexpected maintenance work, it now appears that three of the four tubes are OK. The fourth one is still absolutely NG. I should not have had to clean up the tubes and spend many hours trouble shooting the problem and finding a fix. .
Please reimburse me the $35. I paid for the defective tube. I am> DereK J. Yungling116 Valley View Way Unit 208Sutter Creek CA 95685 I will then write an update to my Feedback Forum comments, including what it took to fix the problem, and that you reimbursed me for the one defective tube. DereK