The AM Forum

Website with mucho tech info, photogallery, audio recordings and store.


http://semiconductormuseum.com/Museum_Index.htm (http://semiconductormuseum.com/Museum_Index.htm)

That's interesting. They left off just at the TO-36 case style development, there are 20-30 of them here. I think they are amps for old jukeboxes.

Yes, very interesting site, indeed.

I know I must be getting old when some of the early production transistors are considered as historical artifacts, and in some enthusiast circles are thought to be of collector value.

I see that the ubiquitous Raytheon CK722 is well displayed there. That was the very first transistor I ever experimented with; in 1963, I was 9 years old, and I used one of them (the blue-colored version with the red dot) as a single-stage audio amplifier to amplify the output of my $2.95 Allied Radio Knight Kit crystal radio set. I can clearly recall that it made a big improvement in the headphone volume. I mounted the CK722 in three Fahnestock clips, and built the whole affair on a piece of scrap wood.

I wonder if any of these transistors will eventually be going the way of Western Electric 300B audio triodes, in terms of their collectability and now-stratospheric pricing. (Please, I'm only joking!).

73,

Bruce

some people in the world of electric guitar effects boxes are allready inflating the value of germanium transistors as used in early fuzz boxes. unfortunately for them, those little devices are not aging as well as tubes. i have tubes here nearly 100 years old that work just fine, but the CK722's i played with as a kid (yeah i still have a few) are all leaky, or shorted. that would aslo include the ones i never used.