UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum

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-   -   A confession (https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=172754)

lightning 3rd Nov 2020 8:13 pm

A confession
 
When l was a kid in the 1970's old valve radios could be bought for 50p from the local junk shop (my local shop was on Hillgate in Stockport Cheshire)

l used to go down on the bus most weeks with my pocket money, and buy two. As l found that l couldn't carry more than two.

l would take them home and set them up in the garden on an extension lead and switch on (they always seemed to work)

Then, l would set fire to them.

l would see how long it took for the sound to go off....longer than you'd think if l remember rightly.

l still feel bad about it now.
Oh and every weekend we would go to my grandparents in Droylsden, Manchester

My grandad would always have a few clocks for me to "play with" mostly mantelpiece clocks
l used to take them into the field opposite and stamp on them.

Remarkably l am now a productive adult, having been in business 34 years actually repairing domestic appliances including TV's etc rather than destroying them.

MrBungle 3rd Nov 2020 8:22 pm

Re: A confession
 
Hey at least you set fire to them outside. I nearly burned my nan’s kitchen to the ground once after (admittedly accidentally) setting fire to a valve radio chassis I got from a jumble sale for 20p. That’s when they bought me a safe electronics kit from Tandy that worked on batteries.

Malcolm G6ANZ 3rd Nov 2020 8:36 pm

Re: A confession
 
A friend and myself used to launch large can electrolytics. Theory, if you reverse bias them with a high current high voltage supply then they outgas a lot. Bury them so the can faces up, switch on the high voltage supply and wait. I think the supply was rated at 400v at 1amp. I don't know how high the casing went but they took tens of seconds to come down. We stopped when we ran out of capacitors and when a can came down and landed, loudly, on a neighbour's car.

The Philpott 3rd Nov 2020 8:39 pm

Re: A confession
 
You probably mystified the owner of the junk shop, but your curiosity was not of Dahmer-esque proportions so iI would say your destruction was 'normal' in the important sense. (I myself may have been stimulated by Gerry Anderson productions where very many things seemed to disintegrate or explode!)

An archaeologist may one day puzzle over a broken clock hoard, found with a metal detector- hopefully he/she will be able to spin an Antikythera device yarn around it.

Dave

AC/HL 3rd Nov 2020 8:41 pm

Re: A confession
 
Before that they could be found dumped, or by the dustbin. Valves make a satisfying pop when thrown at a wall, and tubes make a passable imitation of a depth charge in the canal. They were literally scrap at one time, presumably by the million. Cabinets yield screws too. That was then. No need to feel guilty, as long as you've reformed!

MrBungle 3rd Nov 2020 8:56 pm

Re: A confession
 
I suppose at least they didn’t get robbed to build guitar amplifiers with, a sickness I see in modern times.

Uncle Bulgaria 3rd Nov 2020 9:18 pm

Re: A confession
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by AC/HL (Post 1306790)
No need to feel guilty, as long as you've reformed!

With a low current supply, I hope.

high_vacuum_house 3rd Nov 2020 9:54 pm

Re: A confession
 
A very long time ago (more than 30 years ago) I completely destroyed a small Philips 50’s Bakelite radio which was my grandparents table radio. It was VHF/MW with no LW and was permeability tuned with ferrite cores moving up and down on a Bakelite snail rather than the usual variable capacitor. I managed to dismantle every part of it. Every coil was unwound, every valve was opened and dissected and even the smoothing electrolytic capacitors was unravelled. It certainly got me interested in valve radios.

A year or 2 ago I found an identical model to the one I destroyed and to make amends I fully restored it.

Christopher Capener

ms660 3rd Nov 2020 10:00 pm

Re: A confession
 
I've lost count of the number of valves and CRT's I've popped (some today regarded as classics) and classic TV's as well, used to put the TV's to the hammer to get the copper, at one place I worked I used to fill an old cast iron bath with scan coil windings, transformer windings then when full, load them into the back of the firm's van and take them to May's scrap metal yard near Penryn and get it weighed in for some spending cash.

Lawrence.

Tractionist 3rd Nov 2020 10:02 pm

Re: A confession
 
Meanwhile - in the 60's & 70's I too was patronising the very same establishments [whilst also using the nearby bike shop and have a sly under-aged pint in the Spread Eagle] ...... usually to source valves for sets that in those days I rarely managed to resurrect. You probably had the necessary valves - so fortunately our paths didn't cross!

I'm a much nicer [and successful] restorer these days .... I hope! ;D;D;D

greg_simons 3rd Nov 2020 10:25 pm

Re: A confession
 
I've thrown a few quite nice seventies colour TV's into the crusher myself, as the hydraulics powered up quite a loud explosion could be heard from within!, I'm trying to make amends by restoring a thorn 2k.
Greg.

John M0GLN 4th Nov 2020 9:20 am

Re: A confession
 
As a teenager in the 60's I built a Mullard 5-10 and made a reasonable job of it, all Mullard valves with a Partridge Ultra Linear output TX, I was very pleased with it until the J Linsley- Hood transistor 10W amp' came along and I built a stereo version, having now decided that valves were a thing of the past I took the complete amp plus a suitcase full of valves, mainly prewar pulls to the local tip.

John

Paul_RK 4th Nov 2020 10:17 am

Re: A confession
 
My confession could only be that at age 10 I was even more of a fogey than I am now, perplexed and dismayed that people were going to lengths to afford shoddy new things and chucking out items far better made, more interesting, agreeable to use and often beautiful. Well, I did carry for years a lingering guilt over a couple of sets I broke because they came to me without valves which at the time I had no hope of finding, a Red Star and a Burgoyne suitcase portable, but generally as much space as my parents were willing to afford was used to store old radios etc., and a few of them are with me yet. There's the Bush SAC25 which a chap outside the local auction room sold to me for 2/- (£0.10), saying he'd been renting it out until recently: the Ekco A22 which was 10/- on the same day, a sum I fortunately happened to have; an Ekco TC267 which gave me a not too serious case of sunstroke, as I spent a summer afternoon sitting on it outside the aforesaid auction room waiting for my long-suffering father to come by after work and collect it and me. I just really didn't like how the world I was doomed to be an adult in was shaping up. It's not quite as barren and ugly as I had feared ;)

Paul

mark_in_manc 4th Nov 2020 10:47 am

Re: A confession
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul_RK (Post 1306916)
It's not quite as barren and ugly as I had feared ;)

I needed that this morning - thanks :)

And confessions - I broke up what I think was an Ekco A21 at a very young age for no better reason than I liked pulling things to pieces. The valve screening cans ended up as rocket-boosters on the side of my pram-wheel go-kart, which hopefully suggests I was sufficiently young to be excused.

My Dad later tried to encourage me in electronics, but he didn't know any more than I did, and no-one else we knew did either. Someone on maintenance at the factory used to give him scrap boards out of old tellies (I now realise), and I used to scour them for the 'right' components to build small projects I found in a book from the library, which never worked. I didn't have any solder either, so that had to be scraped off the boards. I longed for a 'scope so I could see what was going on - or not going on.

So yeah, I know more now than I did then, and owning a scope means things are less barren. That's progress of a sort!

cheerfulcharlie 4th Nov 2020 10:48 am

Re: A confession
 
Use to love sniffing smashed valves- not sure what damage it done.

I would think that the majority of boys went through a destructive phase, and for most its safely contained in boyhood where you are not strong enough to do that much damage and you often learn from painful reactions to your binge.

What is disturbing these days is these manchilds in their teens/ 20s and 30s going on destructive binges with the power of an adult.

Sinewave 4th Nov 2020 11:50 am

Re: A confession
 
We were all young rebels at one point. It's a part of growing up and learning the ropes.

CambridgeWorks 4th Nov 2020 12:02 pm

Re: A confession
 
The OP really gave me something to smile about today!
These days, people worry about letting out "the magic smoke".
I can just imagine the scene back then with maybe the sound getting fainter or more distorted as the fire progressed. Assuming the radio managed to stay on tune and the loudspeaker cone remained intact.
No, I am not suggesting the experiment is tried again just to find out. Might be interesting though......
Rob

Pamphonica 4th Nov 2020 1:17 pm

Re: A confession
 
Yes, confessions are good for the soul...

My father was in Burma with SOE at the end of WWII. He came back with a nice-condition MCR1 "spy" set with power supply. Many years later this was handed over to me, just as I was getting interested in electronics in my mid teens. I became convinced that it could be linked to a war surplus WS19 set to form a formidable transceiver. (The WS19 had a rubbish receiver). I gutted the MCR1 and for some unfathomable reason decided that a 12-way change-over relay was needed to mute all that I thought needed muting. Inevitably the surgery was a complete disaster and the MCR1 never worked again. The trashed MCR1 was just thrown away. Oh dear.

I now have a couple of much better MCR1s I bought in penance, waiting for the relevant "round tuit" to get them going. And at least I kept the all-important coil packs.

MCR1s in reasonable condition are now much sought after - Oh dear, the follies of youth.

-Jeremy

electronicskip 4th Nov 2020 1:37 pm

Re: A confession
 
My confession was in the mid 70s a friend and i used to frequent an old TV shop most saturdays and we used to ask the owner if he had any old tv tubes we could have.
Of course he was very glad to get shot of any old ones so i used to get my mum to pick us up and loaded up her triumph herald with tubes and other assorted rubbish we could get for free.
Once home, we used to line up all the tubes on the ground,retire to a safe distance and then proceed to lug bricks at them until they smashed.
We must have destroyed 50 tubes im guessing this way.

G6Tanuki 4th Nov 2020 1:54 pm

Re: A confession
 
In the late-60s/early-70s we used to scavenge valves from dead TVs/radios on the local tip then take them to a friend's house where we lined them up on a wall and took shots at them with the .22 rifle normally used for despatching wood-pigeons.

There was a scoring system: hitting a big old Octal line-output valve got you 1 point, something like an EF80 got you two and diddy-little EF91s and EB91s scored three.

I was rather a good shot!

We also took the CRT out of quite a few tellies, attached a weight to the neck so it would float tube-face-up, then dropped them in the local river upstream of a bridge. The game was then to line ourselves up on the downstream side of the bridge armed with bricks, to be dropped onto the face of the tube when it appeared.

[One of the tubes came from a Pye VT4 - what would that TV be worth these days? [Stylistically it's my favourite 50s TV].


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