Ekco TS105.

[Terry]

Uses an SP61 pentode, a valve that in 1949 might have been considered old fashioned but it's likely there was thousands of these valves on surplus market, so why not use the things up?

This is a bit off topic but reminds me of a tale from our Mullard rep back in the 60s. When he first joined Mullard, one of his jobs was to attend the government surplus auctions to prevent as much Mullard product as possible getting onto the market. Of course, all the dealers from Lisle Street saw no point in bidding against each other, so they just put in a united bid and divvied the spoils up afterwards.

He was ordered to stop a batch of several thousand EF50s that came up for auction getting onto the surplus market. He knew where the dealers used to meet up before the auctions so he turned up and did a deal with them. If they let him have the EF50s, he wouldn't bid against them for anything else.

The deal was done and sealed with a shake of hands and then they went off to the auction where he bought the EF50s for a very good price.

A couple of weeks later, Mullard received an order from a different branch of the services for a large number of EF50s, so the batch he'd bought were resprayed in the appropriate colour, re-stamped and sold back to the government at a substantial profit!