Man, I can't remember the first time of many I have used that technique. That goes back to my antique radio restoration days, maybe 20 years ago. You got used to resoldering pins and regluing bases back then, as there weren't so many new production tubes.
My favorite fix, though, was one I saw at a swap meet. My bud Crazy Eric bought a globe style 50 in which the entire structure was leaning over at an angle. It was pretty clear that the filament would short against the grid. Consequently he got it for a few bucks. He walks over to me and says something like "nothing to lose" and smacks the tube hard into the palm of his hand. Holds it up and the structure is perfectly vertical. The guy probably made the tube worth about 20X as much just by smacking it.
While a 300B is a serious investment, after doing this for almost 25 years it kinda cracks me up to see how much angst some customers go through when the $5 tube we put in a Crack kit makes a little noise or isn't perfectly balanced. One of the facts about the vacuum tube era that has been contorted over the years is why tubes plug into sockets. The current lore seems to be that it's because that way you can roll them. That's not why, it's because you typically replaced them fairly often. That of course was one of the big marketing ploys that SS amp manufacturers have played ever since they first appeared - "those tube amps are tricky, you have to replace tubes all the time and they are really difficult to bias." Thus causing the tube guys to respond - "the worst tube amp is better than the best SS amp".
