My dad was an electronics engineer (ITT Fort Wayne!). He was always screwing around with our various tube TVs and some old tube radio that was fairly ancient. I remember going with him to an “electronics” shop in town that had millions of tubes in this old building, shelves floor to ceiling. It had a coupla testers. That stuff was a total mystery to me but somehow he knew what tubes were bad in the innards.
I remember he built a Heathkit fish finder at some point. Took forever but the thing actually worked pretty well, at least it appeared to though I’m not sure it increased fish production. You stuck the hydrophone or sonar or whatever the sensor was in the water. It had a rotating disk with a Nixie tube on it or something like that that would flash at the appropriate “depth” marking. It was not particularly reliable though as he was always messing with it and at some point I think he gave up on it. My parents bought some huge console stereo thing back in the 60s that was about 6ft long. Magnavox I think, they were a big factory in town and some of his college buddies worked there. Sounded like crap. I got a little Sony cassette deck at some point and managed to hook it up (undocumented aux inputs!) and between the hiss of the cassettes and the crappy speakers it also sounded like shite. But it was fun. I think I had put a cassette deck in my car by then so recorded albums to play in it. I was in college and one summer I bought a nice Pioneer receiver and large Advents (still using them for my TV sound after refining ages ago)) and he groused and complained that the system “didn’t look nice.” I pointed out that it sounded a lot better though and that was what mattered. He was not convinced. I was home for the summer and set it up in the living room to listen to. He refused to touch it until I came home one day and it was tuned to an “easy listening “ FM station he liked. Too funny. I said something about it that evening and he grumbled that well he thought he might try it out. Then at Christmas he got me a really nice Pioneer turntable (I still have that and should set it up too and play some vinyl) and I gave him a hard time that “it didn’t look nice” and he allowed well he wouldn’t have to look at it much since I would be away at school most of the time. I caught him playing his Mantovani and Perry Como records on it though. I might still have those boxed up. Damn this was all like 50yr ago now. The receiver has a bad channel on it and cuts in and out or doesn’t work at all. Probably components have failed. It started doing that after it was maybe 8yo. Nice unit though. --FT Sent from iFōn > On Dec 23, 2022, at 1:00 PM, Curt Raymond via Mercedes > <mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote: > > I remember back in the day when the Radio Shack at the mall had a vacuum > tube tester. > > I forget, am I the youngest on the list? Gotta be close... > > -Curt > > > On Friday, December 23, 2022 at 12:50:04 PM EST, dan penoff.com via Mercedes > <mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote: > > > > > > Yup, seen lots like that or similar over the years. > > These often ended up at my house when I was a kid because I was the one in > the family who could “fix stuff”. I was very adept at replacing blown > capacitors and testing tubes at the local drugstore… > > I had a smaller Zenith cabinet style stereo form my great aunt’s estate that > was in my bedroom for all of my teen years. I remember it well, as while it > wasn’t stereo, it had a much warmer sound that all of that transistor-based > stuff did. Still have the “Tibet Almond Stick” that came with it for touching > up scratches on the cabinet: > > [cid:E7EBB06C-BC81-48AB-8A23-5DF188450CA3] > > -D > > On Dec 23, 2022, at 11:36 AM, Kaleb Striplin via Mercedes > <mercedes@okiebenz.com<mailto:mercedes@okiebenz.com>> wrote: > > > > > https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/677208133799739/?mibextid=6ojiHh > > > Sent from my iPhone > > _______________________________________ > http://www.okiebenz.com > > To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ > > To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: > http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com > > > _______________________________________ > http://www.okiebenz.com > > To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ > > To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: > http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com > > > _______________________________________ > http://www.okiebenz.com > > To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ > > To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: > http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com > _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
