New tubes from US manufacturers cone with data sheets if they are not milspec. All commercial tubes ive ever seen new come with a data sheet that has tye tube mabufacturers logo on it. Night Vision deoot is a distributor for ITT and the new tubes they sell tgat are not milspec tubes have data sheets printed at ITT\Harris' manufacturing facility vefore tyey are shipped. Real data sheets are provided by the manufacturer. Not the reseller.  And i have seen new ATN and  Armasight units that have US made itt tubes and they all came with data sheets from ITT/exelis/harris. Not made by the reseller who sold them to the end user. None of that of what you were told makes sense when reffering to new tubes. in general all new US made tubes  sold on the commercial market that i have seen cone with a manufacturers data sheet. The only ones that dont are US made milspec tubes.


ETA: The main reason that commercially sold new tubes come with data sheets is to show why the tube failed milspec requirements. In my opinion, the manufacturer would less likely bother completing a module with blemishes like that into a finished image intensifier assembly rather than make it into a finished tube and not bother with making a data sheet for it. 

Why don't you ask him directly because you can ask him better questions than I can?

If he's lying, he's defrauding the public.

Edited to add.

So what he's selling is a 6015 then?
Not a deal breaker for me but used and blemished tubes would be.

I dont see any need to ask him directly. He could just be misinformed. Maybe someone sold him the tubes and said they were new. I dont use ebay anymore and dont have an account to use to ask him anyways. But just from my experience with working on(repair/rebuild) and dealing with tubes every day, and the research ive done and knowledge that has been shared with me from other knowledgabl people, which everything i have posted is based off of is pointing to the tubes being used surplus blemished tubes. The subject of night vision is one that holds alot of unknown or secret information and there may be some reason why they could be bew blemished tubes wothout manufacturers data sheets or a warranty abd i could be wrong, but everything ive come to understand about and relating to tubes seem to completely contradict what he has told you. Thats tge point im trying to get across. And like i said.i could be wrong as there ma be some unknown that i am not aware of. And im nit saying hes lying as he could just as easily been misinformed if he bought the tubes from someone else who told him they were new and gave a smilar exolanation as to why they didnt come witg a data sheet. 

And yes you are lookng at a 6015 basically only  it has a gain knob that is non functional.

One thing that just came to my mind, that i hadnt thought to add earlier, that i think would be the most damning piece of evidence against blemishes like the ones seen in those tubes, besides my thought that a bare module tested and had such blemishes would even be built into an image intensifier assembly, is the fact that every tube that is made into a complete image intensifier assembly is put through a "burn in" otherwise known as the "shoebox trick" on steroids before they ever leave the factory. So if they do suffer from blemishes to a slght degree before hand, after this "burn in" they are ususlly almost a clean tube. Now a "burn in" one does at home to try and lighten blemishes or take them out if light enough works for alot of the lighter defects that a person finds in their tube after using it and it recieves a burn of sone sort. Sometines the burn doesnt lighten or come out. Most people allow the unit to run in complete darkness for a day or so. Now compare the burn in period that folks do at home to the one that every tube goes through at the factory before they are shipped to the distributor. This factory burn in has an entire batch of new tubes continuously running in pitch black darkness in a light proof area for sometmes weeks, maybe even longer, to remove any blemishes that will come out. Id say after such a long burn in,  most blemishes that may have been in a tubes image before the facyory burn in will be long gone by the time the factory burn in is finally completed. this is also the reason why there is no such thing as a zero hour tube. Even that fresh new L-3 filmless WP tube still sealed in the anti static packaging that someone buys isnt a zero hour tube. It could already have hundreds of hours on it. 

What would cause blemishes, especially ones like in this guy's tubes, to appear in used tubes?

Bright lights? Weapon recoil?

There are many numeroue causes og these blemishes and blemishes can haopen on tge phosphor.screen, MCP and photocathode. So basicwlly you hace a lit of different blemishes that can form and can form on all the components inside the image intensifier, which ar caused alot of different ways. Its impossible to know exactly whqt caused each blemish unless they are one of the obvious and well known types such as recoil damage and things like that. Most burns put into the image by bright light sources are similar but that is because th bright lght eources are cery common qs well such as red dot sights leaving center burns and things like that. When you start getting into the more uncommon and dis similar burns abd blemishes the cayses become less apparent. Like ibsaid before i hace a good size inventory of surplus blem tubes in various working states and conditions tgat i mostly use for tgeir parts for rebuilding tubes as alot of modules would be unsellable due to the size and or type of blemish. However there are some that are relatively decent and very usable and would wirk great in a low bydget build such as the ones you are looking at. That being said they are not something that could ecer be considered new, as when they were originally contrwcted and sold they had cery clean images for sure as per milspec requorements. Again the guy may just be misinformed and repeating what was told to him by whoever he got the tubes from, but the faxt he thought that resellers made tge spec sgeets and said that certain companies like ATN and Armasight abd whoecer else dont supply the data sheets is false as they infact do supplydata sheets for units they sell that have US made gen 3 tubes installed and the data sheets come with tge tubes from the manufacturer when those companies make the purchase of such tubes and they pas the data sheet wlong witg the unit to whomever buys it.  So ya i would think he just mosinformed a bit and hopefully mot trying to defraud anyone. I on the other hand have alot of experience with tubes and most of that experience is something that only is gained from learning how to build an image tube and then actually building them and being able to have pepeatable and successful results. Also alot of new doors open up for the opportunities to learn information that wouldt likely not be so readily presented to someobe who doesnt work on tubes.  i sold tubes and built devices for a lot longer than i have been building tubes and i wasnt able to get all of the knowledge i have now if i had never decided i wabted to learn how to rebuild tubea and i probably still wouldbt have all of it today had i not decides that i wanted to do this. And continued on the same path i was going just selling tubes and building units. Now im not saying that im going to be always right and my word is the only word. Far from it. as i said tgere is always goingto be some secrret that may come out or some unknown bit of information that maychange evryones perspective and prove something to be false that even the most respected top experts believed to be true a fact. So what im saying for the sake of veating a dead horse, us its up to you as to what to believe and based on what you decide to be the case with these units, either make the purchase or not. You have what the guy told you and then you also have more than enough info from myself and others who posted in this thread ti make your own educated decision based on all of the information that has beem presented.  I could go even further into why the tubes are more than likey not new and are actually used blemished surplus tubes. But im not seeing the point to continue as it will take a while and it doesnt seem like paragraphs of information from someone who is experienced when it comes to tubes, rebuilding them, and has many knowedgable contacts whennit comes to tubes and the aspects surrounding them,  is good enough to help you make up tour.mind over a fe seemingly misinformed sentences from the guy who is trying to sell the units to you. theres nothig wrong with that but i am not going to keep typing out these long posts to answer, to the best of my knowledge, what is at this point essntially the same question being asked repeatedly. I feel as i said, more thwn enough info has been put forth by myself and others for you to maje an educated decision to purchase or not purchase.

My phones keyboard is really on the fritz today. I hope  mist of this post ledgable enough to make sense haha

It makes sense. Thank you Sir for taking the time to explain all of this.

Pinnacle is a brand name. It means thin film autogated and nothing more. ITT was good at marketing. Everybody has autogated power supplies now so the point is not really valid. It sounds cool though ! I was a die hard ITT fan but I think L3 is making the better tube now.

From my experience rebuilding tubes and having rebuilt yubes from every omni era and seen what everything looks lke under the outer boot and comparing parts made by the different manufacturers, i would point out that LItton and now L-3 have always made the better tubes in regards to the quality of the build and parts used in manufacture. It hard to tell because everything is encased in the tbe boot. Howecerif you can compare two 11769's from each manufacturer just look and compare thebquality of manufacturing of the pigtails. L-3/Litton/NGeos tubes have a much more solid pigtail. abd i can sa that that comparison result will be similar when comparing the other parts of the tubes as well.


Niw performance wise it could be argued either way and it was largely based on someones preferrences for one reason or another. I have seen milspec tybes made by either manufacturer that were amazng and blew the other manufacturers tube o was comparing to away and vice versa. Since milspec tube can vary in performance by a good bit with some being way over minimum specs and others falling just on the cusp of the minimum requirements to pass milspec so i think this may be the basis on which alot of personal prefferences are formed. But both manufaturers put out very high perrforming tubes and usually one cant go wrong if buying a tube from either manufacturer.

Well I finally got the data sheet for my Aramsight PVS-14 Gen3 Alpha.
Fom: 1913.6
Resolution: 64
Signal to noise:29.9
EBI: .99
Halo: .91
Luminous:2283

This is proof against the claim in  the answer given by the seller of those 1600$ pvs-14 with blemished tubes he is claiming to be new blemished tubes as to why they have no data sheets. His responces to a question that was emailed to him about why these tubes wouldnt come with a data sheet, his reply which was posted in this thread by the poster who asked him, stated that the tubes didnt come with data sheets and went on to say that no new tubes  in new units from ATN,  Armasight, or others come with data sheets. i stated i had seen them come with new units from these manufacturers  when theunits came with US made tubes installed. I hadnt any oroof if my claim as i had only seen the data sheets before and had none to show up as proof at the time. 

Thanks for posting this. Although it probably wasn't your intention when posting that,  you have helped to clear up that whole deal a litte more by doing so.

No problem lol. I knew that there was a sheet somewhere, but tracking it down was tough. OpticsPlanet just didn't have the sheet. When I bought this system almost two years ago, I called Armasight a few times and those I spoke to at that time were of no help. This time however was a MUCH different story.  It would seem that Armasight customer service has improved substantially. The difference when I spoke to them was noticeable from the beginning of our conversion this past Friday.

 i did state in an earlier post, but not in my last one as i forgot to mention it, that the data sheet is made by and therefore comes from the manufactuer not the vendor who sells the unit the tube is in to the end user. So i guess although every new commercial spec tube bought from a vendor should come with a data sheet when it is recieved by the end user, sometimes for whatever reason tye sheets arent passed on to the end user. Which i dont see any good reason why they wouldnt ve as tge sheet can easily have a photocopy made by tye vendor to keep for their records. In any case ,though, if a tube that is comm spec doesbt come with its spec sheet it means that someone in tge chain of custody of that tube deffinitly has it somewhere. This is a perfect example of such a situation as i described.

Its good to hear that the spec sheet was finally obtained for your tube. It will hold its resale value much better now that you have the sheet to pass along with the unit should you ever decide to sell it.

Gotcha. I would never sell gear lol. Always aquireing though!