Electronics

Tube Fluorescence

These are the output tubes on my Thomas amp.  You can see the blue glow against the glass from stray electrons.  This is very common with Sylvania tubes.  Behind the blue glow, is the red glowing line from the electron beam hitting the plates (I can’t get the bias to go any lower with this amp).  The two together look purple to the camera.

I have read contradictory discussions about blue glow against the glass envelope.  Blue glow coming from inside or near the anode or other structures is normal, but some say that blue glow outside of that means a soft vacuum.  Sylvania claims the opposite and that fluorescent glow inside the envelope is normal for some tubes.  It results from stray electrons bombarding near the glass envelope and will change in brightness depending on the intensity of the signal passing through the tube.  This is exactly what I see with these Philips JAN tubes, which are basically Sylvania.  In fact when I push the amp really hard well into cut-off, the tubes will flash brightly signaling me to back-off

The "Winged-C" SED EL34s in the Dynakit seem to fluoresce at the screen behind the plate: