On Dec 14, 11:49*pm, (Don Pearce) wrote:
Interesting insight into the way things were in the 60s - I've just
been reading a Wireless World from November of that year. Valves
(tubes for those across the pond) were extremely cheap. And
transistors cost pretty much the same, which is why we treated them
with kid gloves and thermal shunts when soldering them into circuits.

http://www.soundthoughts.co.uk/look/valves.jpg

Money conversion for the young and foreign:

20 shillings to the pound, 12 pence to the shilling. A price given as
5/6 meant five shillings and six pence. So an ECC84 at 6/6 is 32.5
pence in today's money. A 28012 transistor, by contrast at 140/- is
seven pounds - getting on for half the weekly wage of some people back
then.

I may post some ads for complete equipment later, just to make you
cry.

d

A KT88 was 23 shillings on that price sheet in 1966.

In Oz, I don't know how much more the price was, but probably a lot.
There were no cheap online credit card sales.

I Googled up inflation since 1966 to 2008 :-

"A basket of goods and services valued at $2.3 in year 1966 , would
in year cost $24.4 in 2008,
average annual inflation rate of 5.8 per cent"

Wage average in Oz in 1966 was about $42 per week. ( over 20 pounds )
If a KT88 was say $4.20, then that'd be 1/10 of AWE. If AWE now is
$1,000 a week, then todays KT88 should be $100.
But it is usually a lot cheaper unless you buy a KT88 that has not
been used much since 1966.

An EL34 was listed at 4/3, or four shillings and threepence, mabye 8/6
in Oz or about 85cents. That was nowhere near half a week's pay, but
everyone who ever bought a new EL34 whinged long and hard about the
price, and many people would *not* replace their tubes - they just let
the amp blow up, put it in the bin, then they went to the store in
1970 and bought a nice new cool running solid state radiogram with the
extra channel and the built in AM radio.

I was a second year carpenter's apprentice in 1966, and every ****en
thing was bleeedin expensive because my wages were maybe $12 a week. I
still lived at home, and could only afford to run a 250cc BSA XC10L, a
1947 side valve POS which had cost me 10 pounds or $20 the year
before. I spent far too much on crummy british motorcycles until my
wages went up and there was lot's of overtime and then in 1972 I could
buy a nearly new 750cc BMW R/75 for $1,650. I still had another $1,700
in the bank I'd saved.

After 1972, hardly anyone I ever met had anything with vacuum tubes in
it.

I probably mixed in the wrong class of people.

Patrick Turner.

"Patrick Turner" wrote in message
...
On Dec 14, 11:49 pm, (Don Pearce) wrote:
Interesting insight into the way things were in the 60s - I've just
been reading a Wireless World from November of that year. Valves
(tubes for those across the pond) were extremely cheap. And
transistors cost pretty much the same, which is why we treated them
with kid gloves and thermal shunts when soldering them into circuits.

http://www.soundthoughts.co.uk/look/valves.jpg

Money conversion for the young and foreign:

20 shillings to the pound, 12 pence to the shilling. A price given as
5/6 meant five shillings and six pence. So an ECC84 at 6/6 is 32.5
pence in today's money. A 28012 transistor, by contrast at 140/- is
seven pounds - getting on for half the weekly wage of some people back
then.

I may post some ads for complete equipment later, just to make you
cry.

d

A KT88 was 23 shillings on that price sheet in 1966.

In Oz, I don't know how much more the price was, but probably a lot.
There were no cheap online credit card sales.

I Googled up inflation since 1966 to 2008 :-

"A basket of goods and services valued at $2.3 in year 1966 , would
in year cost $24.4 in 2008,
average annual inflation rate of 5.8 per cent"

Wage average in Oz in 1966 was about $42 per week. ( over 20 pounds )
If a KT88 was say $4.20, then that'd be 1/10 of AWE. If AWE now is
$1,000 a week, then todays KT88 should be $100.
But it is usually a lot cheaper unless you buy a KT88 that has not
been used much since 1966.

An EL34 was listed at 4/3, or four shillings and threepence, mabye 8/6
in Oz or about 85cents. That was nowhere near half a week's pay, but
everyone who ever bought a new EL34 whinged long and hard about the
price,


Australians, not 'Poms' *whingeing*...??

(Now, why am I so not surprised to hear that? :-)


and many people would *not* replace their tubes - they just let
the amp blow up, put it in the bin, then they went to the store in
1970 and bought a nice new cool running solid state radiogram with the
extra channel and the built in AM radio.

I was a second year carpenter's apprentice in 1966, and every ****en
thing was bleeedin expensive because my wages were maybe $12 a week. I
still lived at home, and could only afford to run a 250cc BSA XC10L, a
1947 side valve POS which had cost me 10 pounds or $20 the year
before. I spent far too much on crummy british motorcycles until my
wages went up and there was lot's of overtime and then in 1972 I could
buy a nearly new 750cc BMW R/75 for $1,650. I still had another $1,700
in the bank I'd saved.



OK, that's all good - now also crosspost to uk.rec.motorcycles and, at a
thousand posts a day last time I looked, this troll should really *fly*...