Vanity Plates

Hi!

No this post is not about imaginary or otherwise stange anodes. This is about car licence plates which are personalized to express a message. In many countries, a specific combination of letters and digits can be chosen, usually for an extra fee. Being totally into tubes, my licence plates always have a tube type in them. I just got the plates for my new car, so I thought this might make a nice topic for the blog.

In Germany there are certain restrictions, how the licence plate can be personalized. The plate always starts with a 1-3 letter prefix which specifies the region. Then it is followed by 1 or 2 letters and up to 4 digits (depending on region).

Since it is among my favorite tubes, the 45 makes a perfect theme for a licence plate, of course in it's original incarantion as UX245.

In the US there is much more freedom how you can personalize your plate. My friend Jeremy sent a photo of his:

 

 

Quite appropriate, since it matches the name of his blog. He used to have this plate a long time, here is a photo of an older one:

 

 

 

Next the licence plate of Dietmar, a long time member of the Munich Triode Mafia. Dietmar is famous for his incredible loudspeaker creations, he builds nice tube amps too:

The plate from my friend Bernd, obviously a DHT aficionado:

This is the plate of my current car:

And my girl friend's:

And finally the plate of my previous car, which was my very first automobile, this was from the time, when I still lived in Munich:

Of course that one had to carry the name of my all time favorite indirectly heated tube! I donated the second EC8020 plate to the auction of the 2005 European Triode Festival. It was sniped by Christian, who likes such awkward stuff.

Do you have a licence plate with a vacuum tube theme too? Send a photo and I will publish it!

Best regards

Thomas