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comment by WanderingEng
WanderingEng  ·  2667 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Twelve fucking years ago? Seriously? WTF

And today you could probably find the tubes and transistors for those schematics on dozens of different online retailers.

Hell, you could post it on Hubski. It's possible I have the tubes you needed sitting in one of many shoeboxes of tubes. I might even have the transistors (but probably not). Back then you had to know the guy with shoeboxes of obsolete parts.





kleinbl00  ·  2667 days ago  ·  link  ·  

...yeah.

Took me 15 seconds to type "robert moog tube theramin" to find the schematic and another 45 seconds to find every fucking tube on eBay.

You gotta keep in mind - I spent three days crawling around warehouses of vintage electronics parts down south of the Dome in Seattle. A shoebox of obsolete parts didn't cut it - neither did a warehouse of obsolete parts. Now?

Well, I'd built one of these before the Internet was more than Mosaic. And had learned that the Theremin is only marginally less annoying than the Hang drum.

WanderingEng  ·  2666 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It looks like I have the three 6K8s, 5V4, and a Google search says a VR150 is the same as a 0D3, which I have. I'm not sure how people made those relations before the internet, though. 0D3 doesn't even show up in my RCA Receiving Tube Manual, much less VR150. Looks like the GE application manual (PDF found online) did match them up. No luck on the 6F6s or 6B8s, though. The RCA manual says a 12C8 has the same characteristics (but different filament voltage) as a 6B8, but I don't have any of those, either.

What looks so impossible to me is the RF transformers. All that's stamped on the ones in my tuner is the patent number and part number. Matching a random part up with the part needed would be annoying today but pretty much impossible pre-internet.

user-inactivated  ·  2667 days ago  ·  link  ·  

kleinbl00  ·  2667 days ago  ·  link  ·  

This is my fundamental problem with most alternative instruments:

They look like this

and sound like this