Tube vs. Solid State Preamp

corroded

circuit?

That is sad amplifier design. I never had that happen with tube stuff, ever. Back in Europe I once had the antenna on a balcony, blasting close to 100W FM on 144MHz and the old Sachsenwerk radio was maybe 15ft away from it in the living room, separated just by the glass of a window. It didn't even flinch. Same for other tube radios where the record player inputs are always non-balanced. That's how engineering is supposed to be done.

The newspaper today was quite depressing. It's unfortunately a IMHO left-leaning paper (all we've got out here) but they were surprisingly candid when talking about the consequences of tax increases on existing health plans.

The original tale was that it was a ham radio operator, and the message said "Seek You the Exit!".

Come on, Joerg. There were amps that sold new for $20 back in the '50s and some small businesses and churches couldn't afford to spend $15,000 on a sound system. They worked OK in 99% of their installations, but all it took was some 'know it all' to screw around with the wiring, the shielding, or leave off the metal covers and they turned into broadband receivers. Usually when they couldn't or wouldn't pay for proper service.

I've heard police calls, Am & FM radio stations, ham & CB radio on sound systems over the decades. On CBer was interfering with a small church next to his house. Instead of asking him to cooperate and stay off the air during their services, they were banging on his doors and screaming at him. 'Bigmouth George' got mad and every time they held service for the next several months, he told them off. BTW, 'Bigmouth George' lived a half block from me at that time. and all you needed to hear him was a small speaker, a 1N34 and a few feet of wire for an antenna.

Old-time preachers didn't need amplification. You could hear them a mile away. What's changed?

se

be

the

n't

=A0 =A0(Richard Feynman)

That is funny. I am a sound man for my local Church, and when I have gotten frustrated, I have politely reminded them that Jesus did not have a PA. He would row out a little in a boat, and speak to listeners on the shore using the natural properties of sound traveling over a smooth surface. I been on a lake and heard this effect before. It is amazing. I think there is some sound wave ducting due to a small temperature inversion by the water.

Chris

All they'd have to do is tap into their Hammond organ. Those are well designed and since they use them to play the church music they are definitely loud enough.

Heck, even a powerful living room tube radio like the one I have is well engineered. It most certainly did not cost $15k. Being low cost does not mean electronics has to be bad. Look at what Ron and Larry Drake have done, they essentially took the contents of grampa's old radio and designed a full fledged communications receiver around those cheap parts. One that gave even Collins a run for the money. Now that's engineering.

What makes you think they had an organ, let alone a Hammond? Do you really think they would let someone modify an expensive piece of equipment? Most of the ones i saw had a pair of 8" speakers in home made cabinets near the rear wall, a $20 amp and a $2 microphone. The speakers were wired with lamp cord, and the crystal mics used crappy single conductor, braided shield microphone cable. A lot had the amp mounted under the podium, because speaker wire was cheaper than mic cable. That meant that the preacher had to set the volume himself.

Some were so poor they didn't even have a piano. A lot of churches had 50 to 100 members back then. They managed to pay the mortgage & electric bill, if they let some of the maintenance slide.

Bullshit 'Grandpa's radio' wasn't dual conversion. It didn't have crystal IF filters, or do SSB. OTOH, some of those old radios cost more than a year's income for a lot of people.

Sigh. R.L. Drake also built some real crap, but it was cheap enough to sell to hams. Have you ever been to their factory in Miamisburg, Ohio? It was about 15 minutes from my home. I knew a lot of people who worked there, and some some of their screw ups that never made it to market.

You do know they dropped support for their ham radio gear and moved into the Sat TV & MATV market a long time ago?

They got older, and quieter. The congregations got bigger, and they added electric fans to cool their building during their services.

Yup. We have no qualms about (legally) modifying stuff if that fulfill a higher purpose. BTDT, saved tons of money that could then be used for worthy causes such as the food bank or homeless outreach.

Modifying Hammonds was done all the time. For a church the usual way to get one was via direct donation. For example when a hobby organist got to the point where he or she simply couldn't play it anymore for health reasons.

Then they just would have had to do what our church did: Get 2-3 folks from the congregation who are engineers and know enough about audio stuff. That's how we started, same membership level, and we are still doing it that way today although we are over 300 members by now. I am one of the guys :-)

Even back then there were plenty of options. Geloso tube amplifier were quite cheap yet RF-rugged. On a super-tight budget you could use a well-designed living room radio that has a record player input, most of them did. There's always someone who could donate one, maybe after grandpa passed on.

No bullshit at all. Certainly they were smarter than the designers of grandpa's radio, _but_ without using much more in terms of BOM budget. Their profit margins were certainly higher, good engineering has its rewards.

The 2B was one of the best receiver in those days. BAMA is down again so I can't post a link to its schematic right now, but it is bone simple. As a kid I repaired several of those (transformers didn't like 50Hz etc.). I was never too fond of their TR4 transceiver, liked my Heathkit HW100 better except for the rubber belts that tended to dry out and slip. My dream was always their TR7 but before getting my engineering degree there was just no financial way to lay my hands on one of those, and afterwards I didn't have the time anymore.

Yes, it was a painful moment when that made the news, the end of an era :-(

The Edebris mirror is up.

Saw that, but I can't read djvu files.

How many small churches had a food bank in the '50 or early '60s during a recession? Some couldn't even keep their doors open.

Great, if you could get one, and had room for it. I grew up in a steel town. There were no free organs.

There were no engineers, other than chemical or metalurgical. The EE's hired to build the steel mill moved on after they finished, and 99% of them were power engineers. you didn't live in that area at that time, so you have no idea how primitaive some of the churches were.

Once again, you were dealing with church boards who had no idea about electronics.

Then you've never seen a high end consumer radio that sold for more than the R.L Drake radios. Look at some of the Scott and other radios built at that time. Some of the radios built for consumer use performed better than the R2, but were built before SSB was common.

I've seen all the Drake radios, first hand. I also saw the competition, like National, Collins, Hammurlund, Hallicrafters and dozens of smaller brands. I wouldn't trade my National NC 183R for the R2 or anything else in the Drake line.

You should have seen their UV-3 :(

Lots of them. But I only know from people who were pastors back then in small towns, not the big cities. And yeah, they sometimes gave their last shirt. One of them had to serve two congregations and then one weekend he didn't have enough gas to get to the other worship place, and not enough money to buy gas. Pure coincidence (or not?): The guy running the local gas station said he didn't have any money left for a tithe, but maybe he could donate in the form of gasoline?

Nobody had any? Nobody with an organ passed away?

Well, I did live in Dortmund, Germany. Ok, early 60's but hardcore steel and coal miner's town. My wife used to joke about that area "You can never find a coffee shop there, only lots of pubs".

Were all the ham radio operators in the area atheists? Those would otherwise be prime candidates. Now don't tell me your town didn't have any ham radio operator either :-)

Never seen one. Maybe nobody could afford them?

I would. Except the Collins S-Line but that was a very different league, cost a small fortune.

I completely stopped following them after the switch.

I've converted just the circuit to pdf and posted to ABSE. The whole manual comes out something like 18 meg as pdf.

So, did they ask your to provide the lake, boat, and temperature inversion for their sermon?

Jeorge, people were losing their homes. If there was anything of value, it would have been sold to feed the family.

I knew dozens of them, and none acted like or claimed to be a Christian. They constantly played, 'My dick is bigger than yours' on all the bands. They were rude, arrogant and did little more than brag about their equipment. It was like listening to Sloman and dimbulb arguing, and about as bright. Some were worse than the CB crowd, and most couldn't solder a plug on a microphone. In fact, I was involved in building the first two meter repeater. Two hams and myself gathered the parts and built it.

A good part of my income was from fixing what the local hams screwed up.

Of course they couldn't. That's why so many show up in antique radio collections. Another high end radio was the Stratosphere, commonly referred to as a 'Strat' by collectors. Some were quite innovative, with features like variable IF bandwidth and it wasn't done by electrical switching. Others had RF remote tuning, motorized tuning and cabinets that were made by top of the line furniture companies.

Apparently before. It was a UHF & VHF FM rig.

We have that happening here right now :-(

Seriously, business owners who grab $10/h jobs. Sad.

That is strange. We had a really good ham community. More than 50% of them could build complicated electronics really well and a good portion of them could even design them.

I once repaired a TV set that had motorized tuning. Amazing.

No, but I was never interested in 2m, 70cm or any higher bands. My turf was shortwave. I did build a 2m linear but gave it away pretty much right after finishing it.