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Fisher branded tubes

S

Sue Anders

Active Member
So over the years we have owned quite a few tube Fisher consoles and components. Many have had 12ax7 tubes (ECC83) that were rebranded Telefunken, diamond on bottom &c. But have had some (in a current 400 for example) yellow labeled Fisher USA tubes, and some white label "made in W Germany" with no diamond, but instead a faint number in that place. Who made these?
 
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Yellow label Fisher's are most likely Sylvania. The white label are Probably a Philips branded product. What's the serial # on the 400. If it's a later(65000 and higher) late model (48001 and up) the sylvania's would most likely be originals. Fisher switched to Sylvania's in late mid 60's.
 
Thanks Larry. It's a later serial # and 48001+ model that we gave to our daughter. Heard somewhere that white Fisher label non-Tele 12ax7s could also be Siemens? As per usual much of the lettering is gone and any code # too. They all test excellent in any event.

BTW we grew up in Towson and Catonsville, and now in Binghamton NY.
 
Would the Phillips ones say made in W. Germany? They have no diamond as mentioned ...Also iirc one of the 12ax7s is Fisher branded but says made in Gr Britain lower on the tube.
 
Philips would be either Holland or W.Germany, but W.Germany is better bet. Gr. Brittain would be either Mullard or Brimar as a guess.
 
Thanks for the add'l info, the Fisher made in Gr.Britain went to air, so has been replaced with an RFT (E. German) that works well.
 
Sue Anders said:
...have had some ..some white label "made in W Germany" with no diamond, but instead a faint number in that place. Who made these?
Click to expand...

Here's some 12AX7's made by Valvo (Hamburg, Germany), do the faint numbers looks like this?


Screen Shot 2022-11-28 at 7.29.50 PM.png


Sue Anders said:
Would the Phillips ones say made in W. Germany?
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Philips owned Valvo so that might be a possibility

If you want to explore more about Philips and W. German made tubes you might find this site informative

http://www.tube-classics.de/TC/Tubes/AudioTubes.htm

http://www.tube-classics.de/TC/Tubes/Valvo ECC83/ECC83.htm
 
Excellent reference links, thnx!
No they have very faintly embossed numbers in the glass, don't have access to it right now but iirc it was a
2 digit, something like 49 in the glass instead of a diamond like T-funken, not white printed-on letters. The logo
lettering was in the typical white that rubbed off, but the placement and size of The Fisher and other lettering
was slightly different.
 
Visiting my family these days, i had the chance to have a look at the place, where some of my Telefunken smooth plate (not fisher labeled) tubes were made. My folks really just live around the corner—and i wasn't aware of that. I think it was the B? In the code, stating they came from the Berlin factory. I have to look in the papers, but funny story. This is actually the area, where a lot of the US forces stayed since it also was the American controlled sector West-Berlin. My folks actually live in houses, that were made for US-personal back in the days—very large flats with a
pass through in the wall—so you could hand out the meals into the TV-living room. I do not joke you!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNair_Barracks
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telefunkenwerk_Zehlendorf
https://www.berlin.de/landesdenkmal...-zehlendorf/dreipfuhl-housing-area-647580.php
 
@Hannes123

Thanks for sharing, having owned and still own a bunch of Telefunkens it dawned on me after reading your post that none of the ones I own have a "B" or "U" on them just 2 letter codes. Curious, I pulled up a saved link and realized I never paid attention to this aspect of Tele codes (see red line)

PS where is Ulm in relationship to Berlin?

Screen Shot 2022-12-25 at 9.55.57 AM.png
 
Dswankey said:
@Hannes123

Thanks for sharing, having owned and still own a bunch of Telefunkens it dawned on me after reading your post that none of the ones I own have a "B" or "U" on them just 2 letter codes. Curious, I pulled up a saved link and realized I never paid attention to this aspect of Tele codes (see red line)

PS where is Ulm in relationship to Berlin?

View attachment 2749181
Click to expand...

wow interesting....well, mine look like this:





https://www.tubecollection.de/ura/codes.htm
 

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" In the 1960s, Telefunken switched to a new code. The first letter identifies the work (U=Ulm, B=Berlin). The first two digits in reverse order give the day of the month. The third and fifth digits, read in order, give the month. The fourth number the year. Example: B800230 results in 08.03. 11962.

The tubes originally manufactured by Telefunken have the rhombus = Diamond on the bottom. All other tubes, but stamped with Telefunken, come from other manufacturers.

Telefunken tubes manufactured before 1960 are coded with 2 lower-case letters as the date of manufacture. For example, a tube with the coding dw was manufactured in 8/1947. The system is extremely complicated. A precise description and tabular listing can be found at: http://www.audiotubes.com/teledate.htm"
 

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so, do i understand correctly that the TF diamond tubes were originally used in the 500C and other Fisher amps - but they were reprinted with the FISHER logo?
 
Hannes123 said:
so, do i understand correctly that the TF diamond tubes were originally used in the 500C and other Fisher amps - but they were reprinted with the FISHER logo?
Click to expand...

Fisher had a branding agreement with Telefunken as well as other tube manufacturers, Philips for example, where their name & logo was branded onto the OEM Tele's as well as others.
 
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