Help! You sent me a tube without any pins!!!

It isn’t unusual for us to get calls or emails from customers in regards to mysterious missing vacuum tube pins.  The pins appear to be cut or nonexistent, which can trigger some really colourful emails and customer complaints.   “Why would you ship me broken tubes?”,  “How do you expect me to install these Mullards in my amp?”, “Who removed my pins?”

It really isn’t in our best interest to send tubes without pins so lets finally put the Mystery Of The Missing Pins to rest…

Do not fear, the pins are here!

Vintage Mullard tubes occasionally come with black plastic covers over the pins.  These are often mistaken as a tube base and can cause quite a bit of confusion when you see one for the first time.  The black covers are in fact pin protectors.  We see this most often in Vintage military stock Mullards but not very often.  Currently the only offenders

These pin protecters were made to keep the pins from being bent before reaching their destination.  With a little gentle persuasion they will come right off leaving you with nice, clean, straight vacuum tube pins.