The "Vacuum Tube" group needs a first forum topic. Here it is... Sorry 'bout the pun... but I could have used Time to get Organized... Be thankful ;-)

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Vacuum tubes and parts tend to be rather expensive these days. But there's a good source for parts, and it's often free: old tube organs.

I picked up a working 1960 Wurlitzer a couple days ago. It's got:

-- full complement of tubes (the mother lode!), including
9 (nine!) 12AX7 preamp tubes.
2 6L6-GC power tubes
1 5U4-GB rectifier

(there were other tubes: (28!) 12fq8's but they're not so useful for audio...)

-- Huge power transformer
-- Large (20-25 watt) output tranformer
-- two 16 ohm speakers
-- lots of carbon-comp resistors, sockets and other reusables.

Total cost--just gas, and a sore back.

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Even the non-tube organs are a good source of speakers, reverb tanks, pedals, etc. The tank, bass pedals and the volume pedal were from a solid-state Conn organ left on the curb...

The bass pedals could be made into a MIDI project, and the volume pedal would be a nice start of a wah, or left as-is. Yeah, they are grungy, but that's easy to fix....