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*dance of victory*

  • Apr. 5th, 2008 at 8:58 PM

Jen and I were walking the girls earlier when we came upon a very shabby looking garage sale. Broken filthy crap all over outside, an old truck full of old junk being loaded.

But inside the garage..

The old man's family was helping him move out. I didn't find out where to, probably with one of them or to a retirement community. Jerry was a radio operator on a merchant marine ship in WWII, then became a radio and TV repairman in civilian life. Nice old guy. Hard of hearing, but still sharp as a tack.

He had a treasure trove of old tube equipment, test equipment, ham radio.
Analogue VU meters, old cable shielding, a biig tube amp, a tube radio, power transformers, tube testers, even his "we use RCA tubes' case full of more tubes, plus four more shoe boxes of tubes.. frickin' bingo.

Some of those 12ax7a tubes, commonly used in guitar amps and the like, are worth between 50 and 150 apiece, but most fall between 4 and 30 each.

I picked up everything for $200.

Well, everything except his Heathkit oscilloscope and working tube ham radio with antenna And I'm goin' back for that next week.

So as soon as I catalogue it all, stick it in a spreadsheet, look up current market values, I'll be selling off most of it.

The rest.. well, there's things like this:
http://www.cgs.synth.net/tube/index.html

=]

Comments

[info]audiate wrote:
Apr. 6th, 2008 06:54 am (UTC)
If you ever get a chance to see Thomas Dolby live...along with a bunch of very modern gear, he has some WWII era stuff he converted for other uses. Very cool.

-Chris-
[info]crm wrote:
Apr. 6th, 2008 07:24 am (UTC)
selling! tubes!! no sir! that be sin!
you be lashing together a machene of ultimate honkey noise for the ultimate noise justice!
[info]yakvomit wrote:
Apr. 6th, 2008 08:36 am (UTC)
holy hell!
I require list of inventory! :D

[info]squidb0i wrote:
Apr. 6th, 2008 04:11 pm (UTC)
Re: holy hell!
Forthcoming.. anything in particular you're looking for? =]

[info]i_e_d wrote:
Apr. 6th, 2008 11:46 am (UTC)
your inventory is not a truck, for somthing to be dumped upon, but a series of tubes?
[info]squidb0i wrote:
Apr. 6th, 2008 04:10 pm (UTC)
lol, indeed.. a series of tubes

XD
[info]heliamphora wrote:
Apr. 6th, 2008 11:40 pm (UTC)
OMG Heathkits are the bomb! And an O-scope?! I'm so envious! I'd love to play with one of those. You really did hit the jackpot!
[info]squidb0i wrote:
Apr. 7th, 2008 02:35 am (UTC)
I was bringing it all in today from the truck, blowing off the dust and sorting. Most of the test equipment is Heathkit as well.

When all the tubes were all put together they covered an area 5 ft wide, 3 foot back, and one foot deep on the table top. Only one shoebox worth were loose, all the others are in their labeled original boxes, albeit many are used.

=]
[info]antimusick wrote:
Apr. 8th, 2008 08:02 pm (UTC)
the only problem with getting a collection of tubes is to know what are defective or burn out vs the good working ones.
I wonder if there is going to be a need for old used IC chips.

It seems like the best items are the two you have not picked up yet. a oscilloscope and ham radio & antenna would be a nice items to have. but I feel that the net really killed the ham radio, unless you are on a island, but even on a boat or island you can connect to a satellite so I guess it's satellites that helped kill ham radio.

have you visited this site yet?
association for Amateur Radio
http://www.arrl.org


[info]squidb0i wrote:
Apr. 8th, 2008 10:46 pm (UTC)
Well, there's a tube tester, and all but one shoebox worth are already in boxes, labeled 'new' or 'ok' or 'flat' or whatever. I plan to test everything before I put it up for auction or sell it to a local repair shop. =]

But yes, the ham is on my list.
In case of EMP, I'll still have communications. ;]

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