New boy.

[Mike Watterson]

On the odd occasions I've wanted to test a valve I've used assorted bench power supplies and DMMs. Messy but effective. Slow if you want to plot characteristics but pretty much guaranteed accurate.

Best solution for very occasional testing or matching or unusual parts. I do have a DMM with serial out and I've seen programable PSUs, so the lash it together option can be partly automated.

Even the traditional testers often use a half wave unsmoothed supply for HT so that there is no need for a regulator, just adjust the mains input tap to the "cal" position for correct HT and LT. So they don't use the power levels implied by the knob settings. A 50 Hz half sine pulse testing.

The uTester can do continuous for low HT currents which allows magic eyes to be visibly tested. All testers need an additional external resistor to test magic eyes.

Also regular testers are useless to test conversion gain or other aspects of mixers. Problematic even for static tests for some kinds of beam-switching tubes, octodes, nonodes, triode-pentodes and triode hexodes without additional PSUs.