by mesherm » Wed May 06, 2009 5:14 pm
All of the ceramic 9 pin sockets I have ever used were the same way.
I have never seen any fit flush yet. A trick with those sockets is to solder only two pins opposite each other and check to see if the socket is even with the PCB and the tube will sit straight upright. If it isn't then its relatively simple to resolder one pin or the other , realign and then solder the remaining pins. If you solder ALL the pins without checking and then find that the socket is askew it is a royal PITA to fix and requires about 16 inches of desoldering braid and many mumbled curses and oaths.
Mike's N-1 Rule: When looking for N number of components to finish a job, you have a 95% chance of only finding N-1 of them.