Help Help Help!!! What to look for?

[Bluesgeetar]

Ok here is the deal.  I was in my favorite antique vintage electronic supply store the other day.  Hint they make that Antique Electric Supply place look like a empty closet when it comes to vintage electronic parts.  Anyway the owner, who has had the store and been in the biz for about 43 years he said, has wall to wall parts and it is a large store.  Anyway I was sitting in the floor DMM testing old carbon comps for value to build some of my vintage type circuits.  We where talking about what I was doing with vintage guitar effects building.  I through in a brag or two about my OC81D trannys I found.  So that got him started on trannys.  So he tells me that he has boxes upon boxes of old trannys of all different types in the back and at home that he has collected over the 43 years in the antique electronic biz.  He tells me, " I don't know if I got any English trannys in those boxes.  I have torn apart and parted  thousands upon thousands of little radios and stuff through the years.  I keep saying to myself I'm gonna start an inventory and sort all those trannys.  Been saying that for about 35 years.  I had some guy start on it but he wasn't worth anything and pretty stupid.  He kept messing it up."  So at this point I jumped in and said, hell I will go through them for you if you let me keep the ones I need for vintage guitar circuits.  So he said, "yeah that would be great!  I can hire you to do that project for me and pay you in parts that you want."

So what kind of old trannys do I need to look for guys?  I know to look for some old OC76, OC44, OC75, OC81D, NTK275, CV7003, BC109.  How bought American trannys?  I know most of the favored English trannys but I have no clue about the best old American used trannys, you know trannys that were common in old USA effect pedals.  I only know a little about famous English trannys.  How bought cool old silicone trannys?  I only know BC109.  Any others?  I start next Wed.  Please advise me.

To answer a question that some may be wondering.  No the store doesn't have a website.  He is an old timer and not really caring about internet stuff.  He stays busy enough just by word of mouth.  He has got two old retired electric engineers that are his partners.  They don't really care either about thet net.  The store is amazing!  Radios that date into the 20s WW2/Korean war/Vietnam war military electronic gadgets.  Some of the earliest tubes ever made.  just amazing stuff every where.  Tones of old radio tubes and misc tubes.  Trannys out the ying yang.  Old caps of everysize and make, old res..

[AllyP]

Why dont you offer to make him a small website?  A few more parts for you maybe, and a bit more business from us lot  Looking for those hard to find trannys :wink:


Enjoy your time rooting about...I hope you find some buried treasure!!

[gez]

It might be an idea to buy a cheap set of transistor tables.  Your library may even have some books.  You can get an idea from the tables whether they were manufactured for high/low gain etc and this will help you decide what applications they could be used for.

Personally (no hate mail please) I don't really pay much attention to numbers when it comes to Ge trannies.  There's a shop not too far from me where I scored a bag of Ge devices a few years ago.  They were all mixed - three different types - and there wasn't ANY difference in tone between the useable ones.  So long as you test them and sort them there's often little/no difference (they're all crap!   ).

I built a few Fuzztones with them and they sounded great!  The numbers on the tin meant nothing to me , I was only concerned with leakage and to a lesser extent gain.  All of them sounded like the originals (they were all crap!   ) and I was very happy with them.

[Bluesgeetar]

I tell you what I can do.  After I am done with the task I will post the types and quantity here and give you his phone number.  I don't have a clue how to design a website and frankly don't want to!  I'm having a hard enough time just gettting a grasp on effect building.  With having to learn Cubase SX and Acid 4.0 and all the programming stuff for my synth arsenal and recording techniques and getting Windows XP to stop @#$%ing with Cubase SX, mastering, tube amp maintenance tons of VSTis Softsamplers a huge sample library and more and more other stuff.  Man the last thing in the world I need is to try and learn something else.  I am only doing this because I basically gave up on being able to find a good sounding vintage effect pedal of the Fuzz Face and Tonebender type and I was on a quest for a certain wah tone that came from the grey Vox Wah and good luck finding one of them suckers or finding one less than $600.  Luckely instead of trying all of this with bass crap too I just bought an old Fender Power Jazz Bass with PJ config and a Line 6 Bass POD Pro rack and I'm done on that front!  I'm pretty happy with the fine results I get from the Bass POD Pro Rack.  So I will post the list here in a couple of weeks or however long it takes me to get it done.  I only have one day a week free from my real job to sort them.

[Ge_Whiz]

Dear Bluesgeetar

WAKE UP! WAKE UP! You're just having a dream, and meanwhile, we're all drooling to death!

I recently built a FF and other circuits using 2N2048s (2N1305 equivalent) and they sounded fantastic. Germanium, TO5 can. Similar to 2N404.

Ge_Whiz

[Jered]

Does he have any tubes he needs sorted?  hehehe.... Jered

[Dan N]

Sorting transistors is a nightmare! Before you get into "boxes and boxes", try sorting just a 1lb coffie can full. Which goes with which and what goes where?

If you are looking for euro trannies, darn few euro electronics were marketed here on the west coast. A few tape recorders and dictation machines. Not much else.

Sorry to be a downer. I have parted out tons of stuff, and even when I do run into some holy grail germaniun, it is more often than not leaky. AC numbers being the worst.

Jared has the best idea. If he has 40 years of pulled tubes, sort those and keep the flat plate tele's and GZ34's for your troubles...

Dan