First feeble attempt…

Okay, here is my first attempt at taking a cool pic. Obviously I have a long way to go. Maybe someday I will have a hundredth of the skill/quality as drifand!

13 Likes

Ohhhh that white QC… swoooonn!

6 Likes

Are you kidding me? You post a 3-Pickett pic and have the nerve to APOLOGIZE?

That’s some major nerd cred right there, my friend. Respect.

5 Likes

Thanks! Maybe I should have written, “APOLLO-G’s” I wanted to also include my green N200 slide rule, but I don’t know where I put it!

I’m guessing the “tube” in your handle has nothing to do with YouTube! I need to get my Telefunken working again, although I was told all of the tubes were fine.

2 Likes

You might want to look on eBay at what the tubes inside a TF console could be sold for first. If you have a few ECC83s (Euro number for a 12AX7, a ubiquitous guitar amp tube, and regarded as the best-ever version) a rabid guitar player might buy you a bunch of nice MPs. And I think the tuning eye tubes also command a decent price.

But If you listen to FM radio maybe you’d rather have the console - those are very nice midcentury relics for sure.

I think this T shirt I designed sums me up pretty much, right down to the extra “O” for no good reason. And I actually have more Faber-Castell slide rules (1) than MPs (0).

2 Likes

This picture checks oh so many boxes… Great job indeed! That yellow slide rule is delightful to look at. :slight_smile:

I don’t know what others would say: I just call these types of details style. The ‘OOK’ could be my next favourite sound in the world. Thanks for sharing. :slight_smile:

1 Like

When I saw your nickname, I didn’t put two-and-two together. So you’re really a vacuum tube guy? Like down to tube amplifiers? If you’re in Brooklyn, have you done some estate sale combing in that area? I can imagine so many old guys who were seriously into tube gear, passing away and leaving behind some real gems.

1 Like

Did you know that Telefunken once made solid state clock radios?
telefunken-CR02_EC-1000

1 Like

Did not know. Howbout that?

Probably uses those really small ultraminiature tubes, huh?

1 Like

Well, to be perfectly honest, not as much these days as I was at the (most recent) turn of the century. I fell deep into the DIY electronics hobby back then and had a great run, even designing a unique low-wattage triode (2A3) power amp that was considered by the New York Triode Mafia to be a pretty good piece of gear.

I have been “tubegeek” on perhaps dozens of fora in the years before and since, and my car’s license plates even say so, courtesy of my long-suffering wife.

Eventually I got less fascinated by building stuff but I still have a fair few projects that I hope are actually still “in the pipeline” and not “abandoned.”

Re: dead Brooklynites and their gear, I mostly have let stuff come to me rather than go chasing it. Even with that policy, I feel bad about the job my daughter is going to face emptying the basement when I finally electrocute myself.

Here’s one of my favorite tube projects: a scratch-built Nixie clock that’s been ticking away monitoring Con Edison’s commitment to the 60Hz line frequency for a good couple of decades now.

5 Likes

Nixie tubes!

I’ve long held a fascination for those. Almost jumped into a few kits. But my problem was getting beyond the tube sources. They seem to be almost exclusively Russian, and while I have no problem with true Russian tubes, it’s knowing what you’re getting is legitimate. And then of course down the line, the issue of sourcing replacements that are consistent with your tube set. I thought maybe of going with Chinese knockoffs for less. But that’s a whole other can of worms.

I think there’s even LED imitations made in glass enclosures to look like Nixie.

1 Like

Love the Nixie click!
I have most of the parts for a raspberry Pi version that had been on my want to build list for a long time.
I’ve been hesitant to pull the trigger on the actual tubes, as I am concerned about finding replacements if they burn out. But I also don’t want to be a weirdo and buy too many. I literally have tubs of electronic parts and components that I have been holding onto since the 90s and I’m slowly trying to sort through it. Wife says I have a “problem”. :face_with_monocle:

Have you had to replace any of your tubes?

1 Like

It’s only been 20 years of continuous use (but each tube only 1 digit at a time!) So, not yet.

2 Likes