Once in a while, while going through a new shipment of tubes, I find some true treasures. This time it was an incredible find, the legendary CBS-Hytron 5814 tubes, but not just that, they were engineering samples from CBS-Hytron. Engineering samples were sent to various manufacturers to get acceptance and determine interest before starting mass production. Unfortunately, there is no date code on the box or the tubes, so it’s hard to say when it was produced exactly, but considering that 5814 tubes have been produced since October 1949, these are not far behind. Notice, that there is not 5814 label on the glass, just on the wrapper.

I’ve already written about these tubes and there are also posts about comparing them to other tubes from other contributors.