CONTENTS: Rock bands, instrument building and the tools thereof.
AUTHOR: Jon Taylor is in Mercy Rule and builds guitars.
What I like best about the internet is that no matter how obsessed I am about stuff—tubes, guitars, etc, I can easily find someone out there to outgeek me. Pictured above is the Precise Model 111 GM & EM tube tester. A friend’s dad built it from a kit around 1964, based on the dates of the manuals and reference books.
Testing tubes with it is a complicated process that involves calibrating the machine for the particular tube you are testing. Scary complicated. I haven’t had the guts to actually fire the thing up and sacrifice a 12AT7 yet. But I’ve got dozens of tubes to test and my curiosity about their status will eventually embolden me to find protective clothing and cautiously proceed.
