Anyone Here Ever Purchased A Tube Tester?

When I started playing with 4 pin DHT and rectifiers I bought a Hickok 800.   It looks like it should be in a museum, it's that nice.  It was serviced not too long ago and have saved me from using a bad tubemore that once.  It paid for itself by not allowing tubes to damage my gear.   

I use a cheap vintage tester, Superior TD65 purchased on eBay and it gives me what I need to know and works fine. I highly suggest anyone with tube gear get one. It doesn’t have to be a very expensive one, but one that will tell you if a tube is bad, weak, or not. 

Transcendental Sound used to sell a kit which I built and have been using for several decades. I can't imagine living without it.

@larryi I'm jealous. Been wanting the Amplitrex for a while now. Certainly the best currently available.

AMPLITREX AT1000

I bought a Beck Elektroakustik RM-1 tube tester in 2015. It was customized for the main tube types I use in my system. It works well and the support is good. However it does not test the tubes for background noise.

I have several Hickok testers as well as several Sencore testers. My hands down choice for go/no-go testing is a Sencore, with its grid leakage function. I have an ARC Anniversary pre as well as Atmasphere amps. My 6550’s usually get about 2500 hours and the 6h30 about 6000 hours before they indicate bad on the grid leakage test and require replacement. ARC recommends replacement at 2000/4000hours respectively. 6nsp can also be subbed for the 6h30 if you want to try rolling. I wrote down my various tube settings on a piece of paper…tube lookup in the tables each time is no longer an issue. Grid leakage should be done after a 15 minute warmup period or so or the indication will not be representative or even close. Same with emissions or any other test but especially the grid leakage test. 6h30 can be tested using 6dj8 settings for go/no-go testing which my main focus is…Hickok has additional dial setting which I don’t have in front of me…