Components, parts & sundry

[Indeterminacy]

Takatsuki 300B words finest audio tube
https://trueaudiophile.com/takatsuki-30 ... ds-finest/

The original Western Electric 300B is considered by many cork sniffers as the
best sound audio tube.

New build at $2499.00 per pair for the Takatsukis.

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[crochambeau]

Oh man, poking around an audiophile website is going to result in a particular brand of stupidity.

That said, I pulled my EICO HF-87 off the shelf last week after taking the picture for the amplifier thread and did a periodic internet check-up on it as one is wont to do. In the time that amp has rested with a non-advantageous boot-strap modification on the power tube cathode resistors (self biasing as stock), a few big brains have been tinkering on the modification front in a way that reportedly makes this amp a much nicer listen than before.

So it's time for another re-wire, and I am considering splurging on the four coupling caps in the circuit with these:

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https://www.partsconnexion.com/product49867.html

[crochambeau]

Oh man, poking around an audiophile website is going to result in a particular brand of stupidity.

That said, I pulled my EICO HF-87 off the shelf last week after taking the picture for the amplifier thread and did a periodic internet check-up on it as one is wont to do. In the time that amp has rested with a non-advantageous boot-strap modification on the power tube cathode resistors (self biasing as stock), a few big brains have been tinkering on the modification front in a way that reportedly makes this amp a much nicer listen than before.

So it's time for another re-wire, and I am considering splurging on the four coupling caps in the circuit with these:



https://www.partsconnexion.com/product49867.html

So I cut an order yesterday with AES, and while there I decided to "cheap out" instead on a quartet of Solens: https://www.tubesandmore.com/products/c ... ylene-fast

About a quarter of the cost of my prior temptation and still a probable significant upgrade from what I've got installed currently.

[Indeterminacy]

Raytheon T 59247 Germanium PNP Transistor
Specs would be real nice to have.

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[crochambeau]

Raytheon T 59247 Germanium PNP Transistor
Specs would be real nice to have.

My sense on parts of that era is that if you're wanting to get the most out of them, test & measure them as individual parts instead of hoping some class characteristic is going to define the lot. Curve tracer could come in handy, but if you've got a bag I'd just whip up a fixture to test them in a low voltage moderate/high gain capacity and sort by noise floor before sweating deeper dives.

[Indeterminacy]

My sense on parts of that era is that if you're wanting to get the most out of them, test & measure them as individual parts instead of hoping some class characteristic is going to define the lot. Curve tracer could come in handy, but if you've got a bag I'd just whip up a fixture to test them in a low voltage moderate/high gain capacity and sort by noise floor before sweating deeper dives.

Agreed. To be fair I originally got them for old style fuzzboxes.
And as is sometimes the case, fortune favors chance. I have a dozen
so I'll just build some shit and see what happens.

[FAP]

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Here's a small portion from the haul of various old, esoteric parts I acquired from an antique radio swap about six months ago. A lot of them have been nigh-impossible to identify; many of them came packaged in bags from RCA circa-70's-80's, which use their own six-digit identifiers, but translating those six digits into actual part numbers—let alone finding datasheets for those part numbers—has proven exceptionally difficult.
I have a whole spreadsheet dedicated to these mysterious items: if either of you two gentlemen are exceptionally bored, I could share it.

[crochambeau]

Here's a small portion from the haul of various old, esoteric parts I acquired from an antique radio swap about six months ago. A lot of them have been nigh-impossible to identify; many of them came packaged in bags from RCA circa-70's-80's, which use their own six-digit identifiers, but translating those six digits into actual part numbers—let alone finding datasheets for those part numbers—has proven exceptionally difficult.
I have a whole spreadsheet dedicated to these mysterious items: if either of you two gentlemen are exceptionally bored, I could share it.

I don't think there is a point to your sharing the part numbers in much the same way I don't think having a datasheet for the old PNPs would be helpful.

As always, I may be wrong; but, as I understand it - early transistor manufacture was a relatively messy process. A manufacturer would approach making a transistor in a specific way and the characteristics of the results would be all over the place. So - what they did was hand sort the transistors after the act of manufacture. The result is they would have bins of different parts that met specific criteria, resulting in different part numbers.

Enter in manufacturers who want to buy a significant number of transistors, and they have specific needs - different criteria are important, so a different sort stage is introduced and everything that passes gets an "in house" part number, not for general consumption. They don't have to pay to print a hundred thousand datasheets, or revise transistor manuals etc.. They know what they have, the OEM knows what they need AND the OEM controls the supply of that part number. A part number that is more or less a cryptic mystery these days.

It's just a fucking transistor, or FET, whatever. It will behave differently than other transistors, because the manufacturing methods and materials ageing allows for a lot looser tolerances than modern parts. Your best bet is to treat each part as its own thing, measure what it is so you have pinout correct and generally treat it like an antique and avoid designing it into a punishing environment (read as low voltage, low current - small signal stuff).

[crochambeau]

So, my TL;DR is: unless it has an odd number of legs or is striking in some manner, you're better off just determining the characteristics by hand for each specific part and going from there.

I love the ice tray as a sorting bin, that's an idea I hadn't seen yet. (ESD could be a consideration depending on material and parts stored within though)

[FAP]

And here I thought I’d stumbled upon some holy grail treasure chest of unobtanium!
I’ll probably build up a basic fuzz circuit at some point & just swap them in & out to see what happens.
In hindsight, seeing as these came from a guy primarily involved with radio applications, I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up being less than optimal for frequencies below a few hundred kHz at least.
I also got an assortment of ICs, diodes, vintage caps, reed switches and other esoteric crap: I’m sure some of it will be useful but, man, what the hell am I going to do with 1,500 zener diodes?