Here's a pic from another thread where the tubes were left in during shipping. Kinda makes me ill.
All my amplifiers are made to fit tight in an inner box where they cannot rotate and the tubes therefore have no chance of having weight put on them. The amp pictured has no transformer cover to support it in the box and its possible that the tubes became the support for the whole amplifier. Frankly an amplifier like this is hard to ship and the tubes obviously must be removed.
Unfortunately some people pack thinigs thinking they will never be turned on their side or upside down. We have received heavy amplifiers which were shipped in boxes much too large with much too loose packing so by the time they got here they were rolling around in the box. Once we received an RM-4 headamp simply wrapped in bubble wrap with a Fedex label stuck on it. No box at all.
That's a sad picture for sure. I must add that one has to carefully assess the tightness of the sockets which varies greatly from one amp to another. The american made NOS sockets I use are very tight and stay tight for a long time. However tube pin diameters vary greatly as does socket wear. With a good power tube fit it takes over 10 pounds of force to move the tube. With some tubes I can lift the corner of a 60 pound RM9 off the table. If I can't then I would not ship the tubes in place. In addition the RM-9 has a cage which allows me to put paper on top of the tubes so they cant come out.
Also this discussion started with car travel, for which I see no reason to remove the tubes.
