[Amps] How to clean tube fins

[Dave White]

I bought an old Heath SB220 from a silent key sale in Liverpool many years ago.  The whole amp was orange/brown.  I marvelled at what pretty gold anodising Heath must have used.  I also thought that the tank coils were just dull chocolate brown because they were copper and not silver plated.  It was only when I fired the amp up and got an instant tobacco smell that it occurred to me to clean it.  The owner must have spent many hours blowing tobacco smoke into it.  No wonder his new QTH was Anfield Cemetary...


It didn't occur to me to use the dishwasher to clean it...though I regularly use the dishwasher to clean cranks, pistons, cylinder heads, gearbox internals etc....

Dave G0OIL
-----Original Message-----
From: "Ryan Foster" <foster.ryan at gmail.com>
To: amps at contesting.com
Sent: 23/04/2010 23:36
Subject: Re: [Amps] How to clean tube fins

Unless someone who had it before you was a smoker, you can just blow it out
with an air compressor.  I've never had anything in any I couldn't just blow
out.

If someone was a smoker or burned cheap candles in the hamshack or
something, dishwasher just like Jim said.  If that is the case though, I
wouldn't just put the tubes in there, I'd put the whole amp.

--Ryan w8cya


> > I'll be taking posession of an Alpha 78 in about a week.  One of the
> first

[truncated by sender]