Turtlerock Forum

On my recent ambling through NZ's wild lands, I popped into a second hand place that had an old wireless transmitter (something like an early 60's version of a CB) - three transmit frequencies, gain control and an unlabelled knob. Absolutely chock full of tubes in a bakelite casing, for about NZ$25.

Now my reasoning went like this - yes, it has a tube preamp circuit but these things were not designed to be hi-fi, those tube amps are about power not fidelity. So just because it has tubes doesn't make it workable as the basis for a nice preamp. And given most of the tubes are likely burned to a crisp by now, its unlikely to be a significant source of 2nd hand parts.

And so I let it pass. The big question is whether I did the right thing? Is this thing the turkey I though, or a treasure I missed?

You should have bought it for $5 and sold it on ebay for $100, stating in the ad that the radio contains "tubes".

Aren't those big old transmittor tubes seriously high voltage? like getting electrocuted just by being to close to it? maybe best leaving it.

Unless it has a mic preamp then it is probably worthless. The mains transformer may be useful if you want to build a guitar amp?