On Fri, 11 Oct 2019 17:37:17 -0700, wrote:

Anyway, time to get to the point. How valuable is a tube tester for
someone who is only, or mainly, going to be messing with audio gear
and the gear for testing audio gear. Maybe what I really need is a
gear tester? Ahem. So, this would just be for hobby use, at least for
now, and I am not gonna spend a lot of money on it. Can a simple
tube tester be of much use? I say simple because I imagine a not so
simple tester will have a not so low price.

Having worked on tube gear for well over 50 years, YES, you need a tube
tester, unless you want to stock replacement tubes for everything you
work on (not very practical). But you want a good quality tester. They
used to actually sell tube testers that did nothing but check if the
filament worked. Very useless. If the filament lights in the radio, the
filament works. Or use an ohm meter.

Back in my youth, drug stores had tube testers. Some did a halfway good
test, while others were pretty useless. But it gave you something to do
while the pharmacist spent an hour putting 20 pills in a bottle. Then
you went home, took your drugs and got too stoned to remember which tube
was the bad one.

I have three tube testers. All are very old. Yet they still work well.
The biggest problem with all of them are the paper roll charts. They
fall apart from age. Most of the data on them is available online. You
can either spend a lot of time making your own roll chart, or just print
individual sheets, punch holes, and put then in a notebook.

Buying an old RCA or GE or other brand tube manual is needed too. Or you
can now download them for free in .PDF format. Search for "RCA tube
manual" or similar.