A Warrior, eh? Are you serious???
The Warrior was proof that if you just keep piling more tubes on, eventually you end up with too many.
Sixteen tubes is just too many. Best fix I ever saw for the Warrior was to remove the four "PRE" driver tubes, and drive the next four-tube stage of 6LQ6 tubes directly. Just copy the input circuit from the 12-tube Phantom and it becomes a ....... 12-tube Phantom in two pieces, instead of just one.
People like to use the word "stage" to mean selectable power levels when discussing CB amplifiers. The textbook meaning of the word "stage" refers to one amplifier circuit, however many tubes it has. The Phantom is a "two-stage" amplifier in this sense. One set of four driving another set of eight (or six).
The Warrior has three "stages" in this sense. One set of four baldy tubes drives four 6LQ6, which drives eight 6LQ6.
Trouble is, each "stage" will give you a power gain of about 7 or 8 to-1.
In a two-stage amplifier like the Phantom, the first stage takes a radio with around 20 Watt peaks to
around 160 Watts or so. The next set of tubes takes that 160 up to the full output of 700 or 800. The driver stage tends to have a higher power-gain factor than the 'final' stage.
In a 3-stage amplifier like the Warrior, the radio drive gets mulitplied again by a factor of 7 or 8-to-1. Here is where the math catches up to you. Those eight final tubes are never gonna do 5000 Watts. (7 times 700, approx).
Working the math backwards, this design will need a radio that only swings a max of around 2 or 3 Watts to push those eight final tubes to their full potential. You don't have any radios that small.
This is where the Warrior gets its reputation as a rodeo bronco, throwing the rider the first moment his grip loosens. The thing just has too much drive designed into it. Getting it tuned up and stable is like holding a broom upside-down with the end of the handle in your palm.
The best advice about sockets is NOT to use the factory sockets. The pins on the EL519 are thicker, and will spread the socket contacts beyond their elastic limit. Makes them get loose after you have crammed the tube into the old socket a time or two. Whether you replace the sockets or not, they have to be rewired. The pinout of the EL509 doesn't match the tubes that D&A wired it to take.
If you're gonna replace tube sockets, you might as well just build an amplifier from scratch. Lotsa wiring labor to do it this way. Never mind the statistical risk of getting just one pin wired wrong on just one socket (or more?)
And if I haven't already made your day, consider how many 30 year-old relays and filter capacitors this specimen will need to have replaced. If any of them are original, they may no longer be trustworthy.
Kinda reminds me of restoring a 1940 Indian motorcycle. Costs a mint to do, and when you're done you still can't drive it to work., except on a really good day.
73
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