This is one of my favorite radios. With a full pack of crystals it tunes both the ham bands 80M to 10M and the major short-wave bands. It is very selective and is easy to use.

We recently were reading a tube handbook and discovered the similarities and differences between a 6BZ6 and a 6EW6.

This tube has the same plate resistance but the transconductance is 14,000 for the 6EW6 versus 8,000 for the 6BZ6. And the pin connections are the same, so all you have to do is plug it in. The interelectrode capacitance differences are not great so you don not have to peak the RF circuits, although it does help.

So maybe my 6BZ6 was not new, but neither was the new tube. By comparison the S meter showed about a 1 to 2 S unit improvement on constant signals at about S 6 strength. This signal was from my signal generator while using the nomad antenna on the 2B.

One draw back to the new tube is its sharp cut off characteristics. However in the short amount of time I have used the 2B with the new tube, it seems the RF gain control takes care of this with no problem.

If you try this, please let me know how it worked out for your radio.