I still have my original Rogers Cadet II amp here and it still goes. It has
had a lot of use over the years and the same valves are still in it. So they
do last.

Brian

--
Brian Gaff....Note, this account does not accept Bcc: email.
graphics are great, but the blind can't hear them
Email:
__________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ __________


"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...
In article ,
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.

Prices of transistors were dropping rapidly even then. I paid 7/6 for a
red spot (OC71 reject) in '59.

--
*Reality? Is that where the pizza delivery guy comes from?

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

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.

On Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:58:52 +0000, Ian Jackson
wrote:

In message , Don Pearce
writes
On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:50:10 GMT, "Brian Gaff"
wrote:

Who recalls the RT and VC kit transistor radio called the Elegant 7,
refering to a whole seven transistors!
I built one of these, but the output transistors were faulty and after ten
minutes they would get very hot and the output would stop. Tuurn it off for
a few minutes and it did it all again. In the end the company sent us a set
of matched GET 114s and all was well!

Brian

Sorry you can't see this, but here's the original ad for the Elegant
Seven at four guineas. Also on this page is my first ever valve amp an
SET (tetrode not triode) down on the right - 3 to 4 watts, it says. It
even worked.

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

I made an Elegant 7 for my mother-in-law. I still have it. I modified
the mains power supply so it would also trickle-charge the 9V
(non-rechargeable) battery (which works - provided you start with a new
battery, don't let it discharge too much, and don't over-do the charging
current). I remember it being not the most sensitive of radios, and
unusually noisy. [I think that some the cheap multi-layer capacitors of
the time were bad for that.] Must dig it out, see if it still works, and
maybe fix the 43 year-old noise problem.

I suspect there will be bigger problems today with the amount of
electronic garbage flying round in the air, but it would be
interesting to see how it holds up. I think I would be going for the
transistors before the caps in a noise search though.

d

On Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:22:03 +0000 (GMT), "Dave Plowman (News)"
wrote:

In article ,
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.

Prices of transistors were dropping rapidly even then. I paid 7/6 for a
red spot (OC71 reject) in '59.

That was cheap, I remember paying something around thirty shillings
for a working one. Sinclair used to buy bags of rejects for nearly
nothing, go through them with a meter to find any that had even a tiny
amount of residual gain then sell them.

d

In message , Don Pearce
writes


Sinclair used to buy bags of rejects for nearly
nothing, go through them with a meter to find any that had even a tiny
amount of residual gain then sell them.

Well, I suppose that's one way of getting a knighthood, and then
elevation to the peerage!
--
Ian

Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In article ,
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.

Prices of transistors were dropping rapidly even then. I paid 7/6 for a
red spot (OC71 reject) in '59.



I had some of those too. There were also green spot rf ones. I still
have a red spot one. Must be worth a fortune now ;-)

Cheers

Ian

In article ,
Ian Jackson wrote:
I made an Elegant 7 for my mother-in-law. I still have it. I modified
the mains power supply so it would also trickle-charge the 9V
(non-rechargeable) battery (which works - provided you start with a new
battery, don't let it discharge too much, and don't over-do the charging
current). I remember it being not the most sensitive of radios, and
unusually noisy. [I think that some the cheap multi-layer capacitors of
the time were bad for that.] Must dig it out, see if it still works, and
maybe fix the 43 year-old noise problem.

I have a 'Good Companion' built using my first week's wages in 1962. Still
works as well as ever - ie not that sensitive. Micro alloy transistors and
transfilters. The ad men were alive and well even then...

--
*TEAMWORK...means never having to take all the blame yourself *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Ian Bell" wrote

I had some of those too. There were also green spot rf ones. I still have
a red spot one. Must be worth a fortune now ;-)


If they are worth a fortune I'm sitting on a gold-mine here!

David.

In article , David Looser
wrote:
"Ian Bell" wrote

I had some of those too. There were also green spot rf ones. I still
have a red spot one. Must be worth a fortune now ;-)


If they are worth a fortune I'm sitting on a gold-mine here!

I think I have some old 'Newmarket' (if that was the name) transistors.
Maybe if these kinds of things are now 'historic relics' I should dig some
of them out... :-) IIRC they are still in the corrugated cardboard in the
boxes in which they were bought.

Slainte,

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

"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*...