Is buying used germanium transistors worth it? Let's find out!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 11 ก.พ. 2023
- Joe from Gray Bench Electronics here, welcome and welcome back to the workbench.
Are buying those used lots of germanium transistors on ebay worth it? Seems risky... let's find out!
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For those interested, Read the Steve Daniels (smallbear) article on Darlington pairs for low hFE Ge. You can get good fuzz with hFE of 10 per transistor in Darlington mode.
I pulled about 20 Ge transistors from some vintage military equipment destined for the trash. All are basically perfect with good hFE and very very low leakage. Half are NPN and half are PNP. All super high spec. Trash can be treasure.
The original GE outline drawing shows a lead length of 1.5". I think these devices may have been "prepped" for socketing, and so these may be unused. A microscopic examination of the leads may reveal if they were already socketed, and therefore "RFE" (removed from equipment).
In researching the 2N169, it appears that General Electric simply referred this to an "oval package," outline drawing number 3 in their 1958 data book. Thera is a later variant to this package, and some 2N169s lacked the hermetic sealing tab.
I have assembled series voltage regulator using zener and AC187 and 2N3055 .Ge. transistor worked fine.It introduced only 0.3v forward voltage drop. Very simple & accurate circuit delivering about 2amp.
Thanks Joe, great concept to buy and build. Peter
Thank you!
I watched one Germanium Transistor video and now sumbled onto your video no idea why you need them for music but cool video non the less
I collect early transistors, and almost bought that lot! They are all 1956 date codes, so fairly early.
I’m at a crossroad I have old equipment cards with germanium diodes and transistors. At my job they converted to hybrid equipment so a lot of the old cards can’t be fixed due to no diodes.
DM I’ll send some picks.
Till watching your channel I never knew why they wouldn’t repair the old stuff.
There has to be thousands of these across the nation. We thru away hundreds of these cards with 10-12 diodes each card.
How do you know if diodes and transistors have germanium?
I'm not an electronics guy like at all lmao, the stuff goes over my head, but I'm a heavy scrapper, and diving into Ewaste (mostly for the gold/silver/palladium), but after seeing the price of Germanium, now im trying figure out what components has it.
@@RedDeckRedemption I don’t know any scraper of germanium. By catalog.
to manipulate germanuims in order to measure them, use foam caps.
GRAY BENCH, What is a consider good leakage current range for biasing maestro fuzz and mosrite fuzz? how much leakage current you need to self bias these types of fuzztone pedals
See the following
sites.google.com/a/davidmorrin.com/www/home/trouble/troubleeffects/fuzz/fuzz-topologies
"the heat of your hands..." Also known as ambient temperature. Without good temperature compensation in your circuit any measurement of the leakage is meaningless. So are you going to use your pedal in summer only? Winter only?
The package you got was common back in the 60's and early 70's from a company called, "poly packs." I have the same assortment you got. These are all production dropouts that have one parameter or other not meeting specs.
I still have about 100 AC125s to sort out so I am done with Germs.. lol I was lucky to score 150 of those in the bag about 8 years ago LOL So far I have found lots of good ones :)
i got a bagful of 2SB423s some years back, coincidentally similar in spec to AC125, but more closer to AC126, and even more OC72, few i've tested have been good, i was given a load of AC128s some years back but with recent testing, most were bad,
Interesting video Joe. I always wonder how many of these 'bulk lots' are actually cast off from pedal markers that have already taken the pick of the litter and are attempting to get some money back?
100% could be the case. Also radio/ham people.
I do wonder about this though. Sure you might make a buck on reselling but for the most part couldn't you just use them elsewhere. Eg too low hfe, use it in a booster, 80-250 for fuzz faces and above would be fine in big muffs/ something else no? One exception would be insane leakage/duds I guess
I just read all pedals with transistors flip the phase of a guitar signal . I never even knew pedals did this, is this why the bottom end with pedals tends to sound flat and looses its thickness and girth?
I’m very confused with this bc I was going to record tracks with pedals to add texture and I was going to double track with some pedals but now I wonder if recording a guitar track with no pedals will have phase issues If I record a second track of the same part with certain pedals?
I got some lovepedals recently and some fuzz stuff from other brands and now wonder if my backing tracking with pedals will ruin my guitar tracks and be a major pain .
Anyone have any experience with this? I never even thought of this
Depending on how the transistor is connected, it may not flip the phase (a transistor buffer for example). Also a pedal might have two inverting transistor stages, meaning the signal is flipped but then flipped back, resulting in the output being in phase with the input. Phase cancellation generally isn't an issue with two signals with differing harmonic content. You should be fine to layer guitars.
Interesting info thanks for the explanations, I’ll have to check what I can figure out about my pedals .
I suppose the issue isn’t as much the harmonic content being different as the phase being flipped and layered onto a guitar track with an opposing phase and the same passage being played. (meaning , one phase inverted fuzz performance over a regular phase distortion performance of the same part).
To me that sounds like it creates the same issue as dual mics recording out of phase and canceling out sound, but I’m not sure .
TO22 case according to Towers International book. But it doesn’t appear to be the can style you have. Says Mu=50typical
Good info, thanks!
How did he put a spreadsheet in the comments? Never seen anyone do that.
The power of google docs!
in the manual of transistors and circuits 2nd edition of general electric it appears as Outline 14. I think it is also nomencalturized as OV17. 2´N169 tipically used a IF stage in AM radios for filtering 455Khz. definitely not a TO
Good info, thanks!
He said you multiply the leakages. May be you multiply the inverse of the leakages?
I tend to purchase the Russian Germanium new old stock. The leads are never clipped. The hfe is of course varied on the components but I don't get concerned. I use them for repairing old transistor radios from the germanium era. The only time I'll bother trying to match a pair is if I'm replacing transistors in a push pull audio amplifier stage.
I tend to pay well under a dollar apiece for them even when including shipping costs. The shipping costs are sometimes higher than they're charging for the transistors themselves.
My guess is that you're well familiar with the whisker problems in germanium transistors and that you can sometimes zap those clear. There are a number of videos on how to do this if a person is not familiar with clearing those problems. It's a possibility for why some of them are not working.
Yeah I remember a couple years ago you could still find sealed boxes of the Soviet germs for $20-30. Don't see those much now.
@@graybenchelecI have a lot of them from my grandpa.
Does anybody know how ten billion transistors work on micro-chips? Looks like the draw them into reality. Mind-blowing stuff
To think it all started with these clunky things!
some nice trannies Joe!