That's a good point,
@kemmler3D -- although historically, vacuum tubes weren't thought of as unreasonably delicate, and plenty of (e.g.) guided missles of the early days included vacuum tubes (
albeit often very small ones, such as the so-called "pencil tubes"). I have a 30-ish year old pair of Chinese made "ValveArt" branded 2A3s which made their way from China to Washington state to my house in Massachusetts in pretty flimsy tube boxes (packed in a box with styrofoam peanuts, if memory serves) unscathed.
Tubes in this day and age are thought of as mysterious, ethereal, ephemeral, delicate, and
expensive, and a cult-like perspective pervades the thinking of many of the
tubistas nowadays. I note wryly that it's not uncommon for many of the mid/high end vacuum tube hifi components to include
cotton gloves to handle the tubes! They're not halogen bulbs!
They can get hot (power output tubes & HV rectifiers, e.g.), but not so hot that greasy fingers are going to compromise their envelopes!
Another pinch point for shipping -- now that you mention it -- can be the packing of components with heavy transformers on (sometimes) flimsy sheetmetal chassis.
Here's a real-world example that befell a hifi fellow-traveler/colleague of mine. This is a low-volume, handmade ST-70 "clone" made in the US. It was generally well packed, but there were no spacers between the heavy (dense) transformers, and UPS or FedEx worked their magic on the poor amp. The damage was only cosmetic, but it
was damage.
Perhaps you can see from the photo below how the output transformers are "bowed in" towards the central power transformer.
Wow, that was way more reply than the topic probably warranted!
