Need some help identifying something intresting.

[Zenwizard]

This unit has no model number but it does have a sticker from BUDs Manufacturing. This appears to be a stand along vacuum tube curve tracer that will output X-Y mode to a scope most likely. I am curious if anyone know anything about this or has a service manual. I would love to be able to use this in the lab a bit on some audio tubes. But I need to know some of the switch settings to make is useful.

Zen

[edpalmer42]

It looks like a tube tester / curve tracer, but it just screams "DIY".

Bud Radio mostly made enclosures.  If you look at this link:  https://www.budind.com/about-us/ , scroll down to the history timeline and look at the green-tinted picture beside the big '1940s'.  Your enclosure is in the top right-hand corner of the picture.  Of course, that doesn't mean your box was made in the 1940s.  I don't see any info on when they changed their logo to the current stylized 'BUD', but it looks like they changed their name in the 1970s.

Your only chance of finding any info is if this unit is based on a circuit published in some magazine.

Ed

[KungFuJosh]

It doesn't look DIY. Maybe it was built from a kit, but every part of that appears to be manufactured or sourced with a professional and specific purpose. It looks fairly similar to a lot of tube testers/tracers that were professionally made/sold last century.

I think figuring out the switch settings should be fairly easy with some DMM testing. Test for both AC + DC with a specific tube in mind. For example, set the pins for an ECC83, and test the pins and levels to see what's what.

Thanks,
Josh

[Stray Electron]

  I've used about a million Bud's boxes over the last 50+ years but I don't ever remember seeing one that had a sticker like that so I think that it must be pretty old.  It does look "home made" to me but it was clearly very well thought out ahead of time so I would say that the it's either a copy of a commercail product or from a magazine article or designed by a very skilled designer.

  I've seeing thousands of similar very high quality constructed projects build by US military and NASA contractors.  They always use the very best grades of parts such as those General Radio chicken headed knobs.  I've bought dozens of similarly built test equipment surplus and taken it apart for the parts.  Most of it has no manufacturer's markings or a tag stating what the equipment was for but usually has an inventory tag.

  I have something similar laying on my desk right now. it's a heavy gauge aluminum panel measuring about four by eight inches with one IC socket in the middle of it and a row of nine banana jacks along each of the long edges of the panel and two binding posts on one end.  It was obviously made as a breakout panel for testing one single IC but I have no idea why they went to this much work to BUILT a test panel!

[Conrad Hoffman]

IMO DIY by somebody with experience building things, maybe hobby or maybe built for some specific testing in a business.