[codefox1]

Ask your dentist or dental hygienist for an old scaler. This instrument is used to reach under the gumline to remove tartar, and they do get dull after a lot of use, but are plenty sharp for cleaning tube pins. Because it has a rounded blade, you can use it to scrape away some of the crud on tube pins. As others have stated, the loctal tubes do not respond well to normal solvents. I have opened boxes of NOS loctal tubes that were covered with a yellow powder on all the metal surfaces, and found I could scrub most of it off with ammonia and a toothbrush. With a little practice with the explorer, you can clean up the foulest tube in a few minutes. Of course the decals, and the tube designation itself may disappear from handling, and certainly with even a drop of ammonia. Personally, I like to get the grime and whatever else there is off my tube, but be warned. Write down the "name" of the tube you are working on lest you not know which one it is when it becomes clean.

Desperate measures to identify a tube include breathing on the top of the tube to reveal the faint etching of the number, and rubbing a little of your own skin oil, (nose or forehead is a source) where you think the number might be and looking obliquely under a strong light. More desperate measures include a magnifying glass, under 40 set of eyes, ohmmeter to locate filament pins, and finally seeing where the pins seem to connect to the superstructure (good luck on that one.) Of course, if you can identify all but one on the set you are working on, you're probably in good shape. Label it with a china marker which can always be wiped off, and proceed. I think most of us can distinguish between a rectifier, beam pentode, and if/rf amplifier tube, but a 6BA6 looks a lot like a 6BE6, and a 35L6 looks exactly like a 50L6, etc...

Loctal socket holes are a little too thin to use a pipe cleaner soaked in deoxit, which is my favorite for octal sockets. If you are really buddies with the dentist, you may be able to talk them out of an explorer. It's sharp point can help you force grunge out of loctal sockets as well as 7/9 pin miniature tubes. You can gently re-tension contacts with this tool, but don't use too much force, or you will either break the tool or collapse the contacts in the socket. It is also possible in some cases to take a socket female from a donor socket, or even one in the same set, i.e. one in the rectifier tube socket that is not used, and transplant it to a hopelessly fouled socket. If the socket shows evidence of arcing, or looks like a marshmallow that caught on fire at your last barbeque, replace it, for safety reasons. I have carefully cleaned and saved many spare sockets from junkers for a while, and if anyone needs one, please let me know. This is a hobby for me (at least until I get laid off,) and I would be glad to help out if I can.