Every construction detail on this one points at the earliest Siemens production of the E88CC: the inclined D-getter, the grey shield between the two systems matching the grey plates, and the gold pins. It carries no markings anywhere, so the attribution rests on how it is built rather than on anything printed.
Tested on the Tesla BM-215A. Reads within the acceptable range on both sections.
This is offered as a seller's assessment, not as a documented fact, and it is worth setting out the reasoning so you can judge it yourself. The grey shield between the two systems, matching grey plates, is the detail that runs through every published description of early Siemens E88CC production. There is no diamond moulded into the stem bottom, which rules out Telefunken manufacture. There are no seams across the top of the glass, which is how Philips, Mullard and Valvo tubes announce themselves. Lorenz built a similar looking valve but anodised the getter support and getter ring grey as well as the plates, where this one has a bright getter assembly. Unmarked early Siemens examples with an inclined D-getter and gold pins are a documented thing rather than an invention. Buy it on the construction and the photographs.
E88CC ~ 6922 ~ CCa ~ CV2492 ~ 9622 ~ GL-6307
The ECC88 and 6DJ8 are the same tube in standard commercial grade rather than Special Quality. The 8416 differs in heater rating and is not a substitute.
The E88CC appeared in 1956 for computer and cascode work, its frame grid holding the grid to cathode spacing far closer than a wound grid permits, and the CC suffix marking Special Quality: tighter tolerances, longer rated life and testing far beyond what a consumer valve received. Of everything built to that specification, the early German production with a D-getter is what collectors chase hardest, because the D-getter belongs only to the first years before the ring and disc getters replaced it, and because these valves went into professional equipment in small numbers rather than into consumer sets by the million. The grey shield sitting between the two triode systems is not decoration either: it is there to keep one channel out of the other, which is precisely what matters when the valve is doing the quietest job in a preamplifier.
Grey shield, inclined D-getter, gold pins, no printing to hide behind. If you read tubes by their construction, you already know what you are looking at.
SKU: 535