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Tubes in Baldwin Organ

dsndblm

dsndblm

Super Member
I saw a for sale add in a semi local paper for a Baldwin Organ. The model is 46HP. I can't find any info on the tube complement. The owner doesn't know any info except that the organ contains tubes and it works. I found some info on a Baldwin 45 and it's stuffed with 6SN7's. The price on the 46Hp is decent but I'll have to drive 45 miles to see it. Does anyone know anything about the 46HP?:scratch2:
 
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I have removed the tubes from several organs. They had a lot of useable tubes for audio. Such as 12AX7, 12AU7, 7868, 6L6 and 6SN7s.

I have gotten a lot of Sylvania tubes and RCA clear tops. You may notice that some of the tubes will have a red (or other color) on the tips. I have heard that these where the best of the best from the factory and that the organ companies paid a premium for these tubes. Almost all of the ones I pulled tested in very good condition.

The amps are also nice to have and there are many threads here on how to turn then into stand alone audio amps.

Happy hunting...
 
Not too sure of the tube makeup of a 46, but I do know it was developed later than the 45. The origins of the 45 go back to 1953, with versions such as the 45H, 45HP, and 45P showing up by 1959.

In contrast, the earliest 46 variant I can find is from 1961. The 47's came along in 1963, and by the 48 Baldwin had gone to transistors for tone generation (which is where you find the banks of tubes in tube organs). I do know that some later Baldwins had 12AU7s, but don't know if they did so in the 45-46-47 series organs.

The "painted" tubes were usually those which tested low for microphonics. When you were stacking a bunch of tubes together in the tone generation section, you wated them quiet. When tube organs were popular, the tube manufacturers were the biggest users of certain tube numbers, and so could demand the best.
 
hey hammr7 o you know much about the baldwin model 71? I can get one cheap but the drive is a little long.
 
I think the 71 was transistors for tone generation. Could be either way (tube or solid state) for the amp.
 
I had a Jolida JD603 CD Player with Wurlitzer 12AX7 tubes on it, the tubes were made by GE. They were average, not good or bad. I changed them to Tung-Sol's and it was so much better.
 
Organs are really good for tubes in general but getting rid of the rest of it is the PIA. Some of the bigger organs have upwards of 40 12ax7's or 12au7's in the tone generator alone.
The ones in the tone generater usually test like new and are also higher quality. The ones in the amp are the heavily used ones.
I routinely look for organs for tubes. The amps have potential also but you need to find a match for stereo. They also need more in the way of re-configuring to get them to a usable audio state.

Take a look.


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