Anyone wear gloves to handle vacuum tubes?

No. Normal skin oil is no danger to the tubes. You know what is a danger to tubes? Dropping them. And what makes one more likely to drop them? Those cheesy, slick white cotton gloves included with some tube gear. It’s fine if you use gloves with a better grip than bare skin.

Think about a 100W incandescent bulb - that’s pushing out at least as much heat as a power tube like KT88, with a much thinner and weaker glass envelope - and we don’t worry about skin oils there either.

I guess we’re all still paranoid about skin oils from those horrendous halogen bulbs of the 1990s.

@mulveling 

Interesting. I haven't dropped any yet but they do not improve grip, that's for sure. 

Hated the halogens, at least in the house. Good for starting fires, not much else.  OTOH, I had halogen bulbs in my truck that lasted over 120k miles and they were on 100% of the time. It's the only good thing I have to say about them but............there is that. :)

When I owned tube equipment, I always wore the cotton gloves.

ozzy