Back in the 1960's my Dad either bought or assembled crystal radio kits for him, my next older brother (out of 3), and I, and he was always experimenting trying to make better antennas, we 3 slept in a 40 ft. long Cape Cod style house attic and Dad ran a single copper wire tight between 2 nails along the distance of a long wall and we clipped our radios onto that wire and had the best reception and variety of radio stations to listen to through our mono ear phones, we lived in Maryland and I listened to a awesome rock station that was way out in Chicago crystal clear and helped put me to sleep every night for years, man I really miss those fun teenage years. 🤔🥲
Hey Mike, Built my first crystal radio from plans in the Boy Scout manual. I think my father got the diode from a local electronics repair shop and we used headphones my dad kept from his time in the Navy.
You sent me back to 1964. I made my first crystal radio with the help of a friend. Then again we made an improved version. We used to hear some local radio station.
Hi , great video, I made xtal sets when I was young, I bought a SW one too, I got some scrap parts from local tv shop and made a tv xtal set listening to audio from bbc and itv , from that staring in radio as a hobby , eventually had a career in radio communications work for the Met police in London . 73s mark G8rde
I built a Philmore kit with a big two-gang 365pf per section variable tuning cap from Bernstein-Appleby circa 1963. I wound coils to receive from about 500Khz to 30-ish MHz, and hung a long wire antenna from our two-story garage to the front of our lot to the rear and back-about 350 feet. Pre Radio-Marti, at night I listened to Cubano, Mexican and Brazilian singers, many of the Cuban singers had incredible voices. Truly beautiful music. The all classical AM station in Chicago came in well day or night.
Love it!! From my first crystal radio, I went on to becoming an avionics tech for 36 years! I had to believe the variable cap was the cause, as I have had many fail. My favorite listening was the 200 to 500 KHz bands for aircraft beacons around my area, it took special coils for that!
You're so funny, creative with your video and all, you made me laugh. I fondly remember my first crystal radio too, it led me down a path of no return, built radios and FM transmitters pretty much most of my life, and it became an obsession. Today I use SDR radios (yes it's a swearword amongst old timers) but, this old timer don't mind the future, and the future is now.
My dad built a crystal radio when I was a little kid. When we moved into the house they still live in he hung a loud speaker that I think my uncal got off a navy ship he worked on. And hooked up the radio to the loud speaker. My room was right next to the garage and at night when the house and city got quiet I can remember drifting off to news talk radio.😂😂😂
1954 how to build was in a in a boy scout book. My Dad built one with me (daughter). I remember we used foil from a cigarette package. My sister and I each listened on seperated pieces of a headset. They still had radio drama shows on the one station that came. Even westerns. Fell to sleep happy. We slept in an upstair bedroom and the antenna ran entire length of the upstair space.
Great video! Just discovered your channel. I messed around with crystal radios as a kid in the 90s but at the time I didn't realize my "ground" was to a metal pipe that went to a plastic drain pipe. No wonder they didn't work LOL
Years ago I found that the three-wire grounded outlet for my washing machine went into a box in the basement that only had two wires and no ground at all.
@michaelsimpson5417 🤭, something tells me that would trigger the authors of the 2023 National Electrical Code like crazy! I just looked it up and the first edition of the National Electrical Code to require grounded and GFCI outlets in residential construction was published in 1971, with the 1975 edition expanding the requirement to include bathrooms and other rooms that become sources of standing water, especially exterior rooms.
@@scratchpad7954 Do you mean the plug to pick up the ground? I admit it's not the best ground, because the ground wire is throughout the house and probably acts as another antenna.
Micheal if we could only take a picture of the wire on a coil and use that to wrap a new coil….😂! It would make kit building a whole lot easier..👍! 73! Have a great day!
I scored an original Philmore galena crystal in the original box decades ago. I remember building the Official Boy Scout crystal radio kit, pretty lame in truth.. It only picked up one station, that was directly across the bay from my parents house running 1KW . Modern Radio Labs has a great series of books on crystal sets. Crystal phono cartridges have the same problem with moisture.
Love it mate, entertaining as fsck. Love the fireworks. I have a small turbojet engine that would fit inside the coil, it's on my channel. Unfortunately when we make stuff like this in Australia we just get a voice in low quiet tones giving us a number to call. Thumbs up mate, 👍 Edit, had to add... LEGEND!!!!
Great video, I really enjoyed that. Built one as a kid, could only pic up 3 stations. Yours works much better than mine ever did, but on the other hand, mine never blew up! But it started my interest in radios and electronics, which led me to be an electronic engineer. I live in Oregon today, but originally from the Delaware area. From the station numbers you gave, I can tell that you are as well. My next radio was a nine transistor GE, that took me through my WIBG days, today I collect radios, can't get enough of them. Thanks again, you made my day.
I grew up in Philadelphia. My first crystal set, in 1966, picked up WIBG and KYW. WIBG became my favorite radio station. KYW always interfered because it was so powerful it would come across the whole dial. When I moved I thought I'd get rid of it. Surprise, the transmitter is on Joshua Road in Whitemarsh. I moved CLOSER to it! LOL!!
Back in 1976 I had a Six Million Dollar Man action figure. He had a button on the back to raise his arm. It came with a plastic Small Block Chevy engine he could lift. If you looked into a tiny hole in the back of his head, you can see out his eye as a fish eye lense. You could peel back rubber skin from his arm and leg to reveal tiny plastic electronics modules (printed color shapes in clear Lucite) that you can remove. The best part was his back pack. It was a Crystal Radio (I still have it). You opened a compartment on it and removed a ground wire with an alligator clip on it and a Crystal Earphone just like the one in your kit. You clipped the ground to a water pipe and put the earphone in your ear. The coolest part was you tuned in stations by sliding the pack pack's antenna rod up and down. It used a sliding ferrite core inside a coil rather than a tuning capacitor. In Bridgeport Connecticut USA I picked up 600 AM WICC loud and clear. I Rememer 1530 WDJZ came online soon after and I could get that station too.
@@michaelsimpson5417 If it was Mint In Box (MIB), yes, probably worth about $250. Mine is used, no box, the plastic is yellowed and the stickers on it are a bit worn... but it still works. I guess the earphone is not the Salt crystal type as it still works after 48 years stored in various humdity levels.
When you first mentioned your sad crystal earplug story, I knew exactly where you were going. My experience was with crystal phono cartridges. I got a bunch of complete tonearm assemblies at closeout prices. If I remember, they were Philmore also. They were cheap, a quarter apiece. Cheap plastic, made for kiddie phonos. Well, the same thing happened to them too. I opened the cartridges, just powder came out. Luckily, I only wasted three or four bucks. Great little video, subscribed.
I guess they were never meant to last for a half a century or more. Most kiddie phonos probably ended up in the trash. In the 1950s you wouldn't use a crystal cartridge in a "high fidelity" system.
0:30 -- RE: Mom!! Robert Stole My Radio!; .... and you just passed your Meta Test with flying colors. Unboxing, check! Plus the age-appropriate Mom joke. Well done!
In '55 my buddy and I started a Cox 049 engine in the spare room! Smoke and lots of noise! Mom was not at all impressed....fortunately my crystal radio was not found with its antenna hanging off the second floor gutter.
My mother never hit me or beat me, never ever. Nevertheless, I was a curious boy and did a lot of experiments without knowing how they would turn out. We didn't had ready made kits with crystal diodes but experimenters kits. kind of the kits 150 experiments in one box. We had very good electronics magazines and strong AM public radio station in our neighbourhood. For an 8 years old boy it was an easy job making a capable receiver out of WWII style head phones, germanium diode and (squeezing) trimmer cap. It was a big fun listening the remote foreign radio deep in the night when I should had taken a sleep. No f*** chinese crap insed.
I love your videos ! The yellow coating is cadmium, be careful, don't breathe it ! I use latex gloves when handling and cleaning...... Question: How is it that sometimes they show using a resistor across the crystal earphone? I never used a resistor on my school built Graymark crystal set I built back in 1972....? Perry
Liquid rust remover dissolved the oxidized cadmium within minutes. It went down the drain. Then I sprayed it with clear lacquer. It got a matte finish, same as the screw heads, otherwise they'd look new.. Some sets need the resistor across the crystal earphone because the earphone acts like an open circuit. On my amplifier I had a 10K resistor across it.
It seems there are still many active AM radio stations in the US. It has been largely phased out over here in Northern Europe, last time I tried I could only pick up a single station.
FWIW: As I understand it, at least some _Crystal Radio_ 'purists' consider using a _cat's whisker_ to be a _proper Crystal Set._ I do not know why for sure, but I have always thought {clear} _germanium crystal diodes,_ even though fairly common mass-produced items, had a certain 'beauty' to them. Maybe because I have always thought clear hexagonal quartz rocks had a 'beauty' to them: _Transparent rocks._
At 15:31 I think thin plastic sandwich bags (like for school lunches) could be used for the insulators (dielectric). It may effect the capacitance slightly but it is worth a try.
Yes, that would work very well. The problem is I need to stamp out a bunch of them at once so they are all the same. Maybe I can find somebody with a laser cutter who can make them.
The piezoelectric disk in the earplug was connected to the leads with glue. This resulted in a very high failure rate. Here's an account of the problems: www.usefulcomponents.com/main_contents/information/crystal_earpieces/crystal_earpiece_problems.html
It took me three days to convince Sloane they were bad. He was checking them by holding one lead and tapping the other on his stove, which was grounded. I told him to use an actual crystal radio. When he realized they were all bad I didn't hear back from him. Even if they were only $2 each, he must have lost $1000.
Da suchst du bis du grau bist.Meine besten Sets besitzen Variable Spulenkoppler mit 2 Spulen und Schottky Dioden(¹⁶ AM Stationen nachts...Die Wabenspulen baute ich selbst mit Q Messbrücke,Güte 192!❤ Bin jetzt alt und etwas krank😂❤
I love this video Mike ! Would love to see a sequel where you cut out some of your mom's 'cellophane' for the dielectric disks (or maybe use a set of annular hole-punches as used on carpets to receive bolts (eg. for chairlifts).. Leaving out the coil as a kid shows you were a bold innovator. Maybe you had the antenna wrapped around the attic several times instead ;-} . What I always wanted to do was use a germanium bridge rectifier for 'full-wave' detection, supposing it might give a better fidelity detection. But the mmv drops virtually eliminated the power. Still, it's a fascinating idea, and I didn't have your nifty high-input-impedance amp. Did you do a video on that?
@@garyknight8966 You can buy the amp module on ebay or Amazon, then just connect a speaker, a battery, and clip leads for the input. Here is one from Mike Peebles. The drawings look complicated but all those parts aren't required, and Mike built the amp from scratch. www.peeblesoriginals.com/catalog/manuals/PO-386.pdf
Sounds like (no pun intended) that Sloan knew they were garbage. I have crystal earphones for my Six Million Dollar Man Crystal Radio and my Radio Shack 150-in-1 Electronics kit. I am going to keep mine in zip lock bags with a dessicant pack just like you did. I never knew the good ones were hygroscopic... that is good to know!
Actually, it took me three days to convince him they were bad. In the video I have a large bag of them. I have a photo that Sloane sent me of a box containing six of those bags, so he had about 600 of them. I don't know where he got them or whatever became of them. If you take one apart the crystal looks like a small piece of shattered glass.
Mike, that was an entertaining video. You made washing the disgusting dishes much more fun. And stop playing with that damn drill! You're going to Blind yourself.😊
Sad to say, crystal record player cartridges also use the same crystal, and they took dissolve in just the same way. I never did get a crystal radio to work. My granddad showed me how to make one, and his always worked, but try as I might, I could never get a peep out of mine! 😞🤦
Ha! Ha! Ha! AS a solution to your ear pieces, would growing your own Roschell salt crystals be an option worth considering? I would like to give it a go myself and would like five of those earpieces please. Not the whole box, in case this works. I will let you know if I am successful. I like your sense of humor.
That thought crossed my mind, but there is a foil diaphragm connected to a post which sits on the crystal. You have to slice the foil to get inside which ruins it. Go to my website and scroll to the bottom for my email address. Send me your address and I'll send you some earplugs. www.analogdial.com/
So all my effort with the fake radio paid off. I printed the graphic on a paper bag that I cut to the size of printer paper and put in the printer. It looks real!
@@michaelsimpson5417 wow we are close and have the same interests! That’s very cool! I restore old radios, phonographs, TV’s, anything electronic really! I’m also a vintage computer collector and repair guy! I am an IT admin for a day job.
They're not really made to come apart. There's a post that sits on the crystal that is connected to a foil diaphragm, which is glued to the plastic housing. They're sealed up pretty well, I can't believe they were all damaged, but I have no idea where they've been stored for the past 60 years.
Great skit in the video. About the roschell salt crystals, sad to hear about that, rest in peace all those crystal earpieces that could have been used. Is there any way to save or restore em all?
We considered putting metallic piezo elements in the housings, but what would be the point? You can already buy them. Without the Rochelle Salt crystal there is nothing special about them. The amount of earplugs shown in the video is just a portion. Sloane has the rest.
At 2:47 when I got older, getting punished had become a joke because my parents did not hurt us, they just wanted to make a point. I started to laugh when my mom punished me. While she was giving me the wooden spoon on my behind, I would pretend I was on the the phone, "Hello, child abuse hotline? Yeah, you better get over here right away....". She would stop and start laughing with me as I outgrew the effectiveness and just made of joke of it all.
That's a pretty funny story. When we were little my mom would grab us by the wrist and beat our back side with the belt, and we'd end up running in a circle trying to get away.
crystal earpieces dont work due to moisture ingress which ruins the salt. i had a few of these and did not work after a few years or o/p was very low. you can try heating them to remove the mositure
I must have built a dozen crystal radios as a kid. A few from kits, others homebrewed. Thanks for bringing back those memories.
Back in the 1960's my Dad either bought or assembled crystal radio kits for him, my next older brother (out of 3), and I, and he was always experimenting trying to make better antennas, we 3 slept in a 40 ft. long Cape Cod style house attic and Dad ran a single copper wire tight between 2 nails along the distance of a long wall and we clipped our radios onto that wire and had the best reception and variety of radio stations to listen to through our mono ear phones, we lived in Maryland and I listened to a awesome rock station that was way out in Chicago crystal clear and helped put me to sleep every night for years, man I really miss those fun teenage years. 🤔🥲
Pretty Cool Mike! The kid on the front looks like some sort of 60's movie star...
Maybe the boy on the front looks like Johnny Quest from 1970's TV cartoons.
Hey Mike, Built my first crystal radio from plans in the Boy Scout manual. I think my father got the diode from a local electronics repair shop and we used headphones my dad kept from his time in the Navy.
You sent me back to 1964. I made my first crystal radio with the help of a friend. Then again we made an improved version. We used to hear some local radio station.
Hi , great video, I made xtal sets when I was young, I bought a SW one too, I got some scrap parts from local tv shop and made a tv xtal set listening to audio from bbc and itv , from that staring in radio as a hobby , eventually had a career in radio communications work for the Met police in London . 73s mark G8rde
"If he comes home from work." I like this guy.
Radio blows up. This guy gets a like.
Drill turntable goes nuts, subscribed.
Thanks!
Exactly.
I built a Philmore kit with a big two-gang 365pf per section variable tuning cap from Bernstein-Appleby circa 1963. I wound coils to receive from about 500Khz to 30-ish MHz, and hung a long wire antenna from our two-story garage to the front of our lot to the rear and back-about 350 feet. Pre Radio-Marti, at night I listened to Cubano, Mexican and Brazilian singers, many of the Cuban singers had incredible voices. Truly beautiful music. The all classical AM station in Chicago came in well day or night.
Love it!!
From my first crystal radio, I went on to becoming an avionics tech for 36 years!
I had to believe the variable cap was the cause, as I have had many fail.
My favorite listening was the 200 to 500 KHz bands for aircraft beacons around my area, it took special coils for that!
You're so funny, creative with your video and all, you made me laugh. I fondly remember my first crystal radio too, it led me down a path of no return, built radios and FM transmitters pretty much most of my life, and it became an obsession. Today I use SDR radios (yes it's a swearword amongst old timers) but, this old timer don't mind the future, and the future is now.
fun recomandation from youtube, skit at the beginning was great, and looks like you are having a blast! DEfinitely following for more shanenigans!
I enjoyed your video. I've been a ham radio operator for 35 years and I've never made a crystal radio.THANKS
GREAT stuff cheers for the laughs, and the ear plug story is crazy, you couldn't write that s***. Thanks again for the video.🇬🇧🇺🇲🍻💯👍
My dad got me a crystal radio kit back in the 60's.. Worked pretty well, I had about a 60ft wire antenna on it.
The video was great, funny and informative. The crystal radio my first build. Then on to Heathkit radios, amps, and a color tv.
My dad built a crystal radio when I was a little kid. When we moved into the house they still live in he hung a loud speaker that I think my uncal got off a navy ship he worked on. And hooked up the radio to the loud speaker. My room was right next to the garage and at night when the house and city got quiet I can remember drifting off to news talk radio.😂😂😂
That item was a Christmas gift one year when I was a young boy.
1954 how to build was in a in a boy scout book. My Dad built one with me (daughter). I remember we used foil from a cigarette package. My sister and I each listened on seperated pieces of a headset.
They still had radio drama shows on the one station that came. Even westerns. Fell to sleep happy. We slept in an upstair bedroom and the antenna ran entire length of the upstair space.
I enjoyed your Video a lot. Thanks. Ali from Iran
That crystal radio seemed amazingly selective, much better than my effort 55 years ago
It got more stations than most crystal sets
My mom said the same thing to me all the time. She hated seeing wires. WOW, it's working great with the NOS cap.
Great video! Just discovered your channel. I messed around with crystal radios as a kid in the 90s but at the time I didn't realize my "ground" was to a metal pipe that went to a plastic drain pipe. No wonder they didn't work LOL
Years ago I found that the three-wire grounded outlet for my washing machine went into a box in the basement that only had two wires and no ground at all.
@michaelsimpson5417 🤭, something tells me that would trigger the authors of the 2023 National Electrical Code like crazy! I just looked it up and the first edition of the National Electrical Code to require grounded and GFCI outlets in residential construction was published in 1971, with the 1975 edition expanding the requirement to include bathrooms and other rooms that become sources of standing water, especially exterior rooms.
@@scratchpad7954 Do you mean the plug to pick up the ground? I admit it's not the best ground, because the ground wire is throughout the house and probably acts as another antenna.
OMG ... i sparked my eye out
Fun video you got me the boom boom radio. For the earplug replace the crystal with rock salt haha!
We all went through the same thing when we were kids
Either your mother is that old or your hearing voices again
Loved the video.
Thank you.
Best video EVER!!!!
Thanks for the stroll down amnesia lane!
The rochelle salt disintegrating also happens to pre-1960s Philips phono cartridges. It's a sad fact of life.
Micheal if we could only take a picture of the wire on a coil and use that to wrap a new coil….😂! It would make kit building a whole lot easier..👍!
73! Have a great day!
I just discovered your channel, it is a breath of fresh air as I struggle to build my radio projhects. You are the Red Green of the hobby!
You tube read my mind 3am trying to get away from the " rabbit hole" I managed to have a pretty awesome setup when I was a kid. Thanks 👍
I've had stone dead crystal mics that the moisture got to it.
Your creations are such a BLAST💥, Mike!👍Fascinating and Fun!!! 👏
I scored an original Philmore galena crystal in the original box decades ago. I remember building the Official Boy Scout crystal radio kit, pretty lame in truth.. It only picked up one station, that was directly across the bay from my parents house running 1KW . Modern Radio Labs has a great series of books on crystal sets.
Crystal phono cartridges have the same problem with moisture.
Due to my interest in Crystal radios, I got myself heavily involved into Electronics. I now build and repair electronic circuits.
This is too cool! It's fascinating how simple it looks. Thank you for sharing.
Very cool!
Hello michael, i have recently found your channel and can say that I really like it
Humor, actual interessting stuff
Just really nice vids :)
Love it mate, entertaining as fsck. Love the fireworks. I have a small turbojet engine that would fit inside the coil, it's on my channel. Unfortunately when we make stuff like this in Australia we just get a voice in low quiet tones giving us a number to call. Thumbs up mate, 👍 Edit, had to add...
LEGEND!!!!
Great video, I really enjoyed that. Built one as a kid, could only pic up 3 stations. Yours works much better than mine ever did, but on the other hand, mine never blew up! But it started my interest in radios and electronics, which led me to be an electronic engineer. I live in Oregon today, but originally from the Delaware area. From the station numbers you gave, I can tell that you are as well. My next radio was a nine transistor GE, that took me through my WIBG days, today I collect radios, can't get enough of them. Thanks again, you made my day.
I grew up in Philadelphia. My first crystal set, in 1966, picked up WIBG and KYW. WIBG became my favorite radio station. KYW always interfered because it was so powerful it would come across the whole dial. When I moved I thought I'd get rid of it. Surprise, the transmitter is on Joshua Road in Whitemarsh. I moved CLOSER to it! LOL!!
@@michaelsimpson5417 That is so funny. Those were magical days back in the 60's.
Informative and entertaining! Well done
great video!! fun to watch reminds me of childhood
Back in 1976 I had a Six Million Dollar Man action figure. He had a button on the back to raise his arm. It came with a plastic Small Block Chevy engine he could lift. If you looked into a tiny hole in the back of his head, you can see out his eye as a fish eye lense. You could peel back rubber skin from his arm and leg to reveal tiny plastic electronics modules (printed color shapes in clear Lucite) that you can remove. The best part was his back pack. It was a Crystal Radio (I still have it). You opened a compartment on it and removed a ground wire with an alligator clip on it and a Crystal Earphone just like the one in your kit. You clipped the ground to a water pipe and put the earphone in your ear. The coolest part was you tuned in stations by sliding the pack pack's antenna rod up and down. It used a sliding ferrite core inside a coil rather than a tuning capacitor. In Bridgeport Connecticut USA I picked up 600 AM WICC loud and clear. I Rememer 1530 WDJZ came online soon after and I could get that station too.
That sounds cool. I bet it's worth a small fortune today!
@@michaelsimpson5417 If it was Mint In Box (MIB), yes, probably worth about $250. Mine is used, no box, the plastic is yellowed and the stickers on it are a bit worn... but it still works. I guess the earphone is not the Salt crystal type as it still works after 48 years stored in various humdity levels.
Mom always knows best.
I still build them as an adult.
I've heard KYW a few times from about 500 miles away on my crystal sets.
Best ending ever!
When you first mentioned your sad crystal earplug story, I knew exactly where you were going. My experience was with crystal phono cartridges. I got a bunch of complete tonearm assemblies at closeout prices. If I remember, they were Philmore also. They were cheap, a quarter apiece. Cheap plastic, made for kiddie phonos. Well, the same thing happened to them too. I opened the cartridges, just powder came out. Luckily, I only wasted three or four bucks. Great little video, subscribed.
I guess they were never meant to last for a half a century or more. Most kiddie phonos probably ended up in the trash. In the 1950s you wouldn't use a crystal cartridge in a "high fidelity" system.
0:30 -- RE: Mom!! Robert Stole My Radio!; .... and you just passed your Meta Test with flying colors. Unboxing, check! Plus the age-appropriate Mom joke. Well done!
Well done Mike!
Great video - love the humor. There are so many good points in your video. KUDOS - one is always test what you sell eh?
In '55 my buddy and I started a Cox 049 engine in the spare room! Smoke and lots of noise! Mom was not at all impressed....fortunately my crystal radio was not found with its antenna hanging off the second floor gutter.
I made a Crystal radio in the 80´s. I trying to put in life again
to use a good antenna, you can use frog cable 300 ohms ant two 10 meters longwires for better reception.
My mother never hit me or beat me, never ever.
Nevertheless, I was a curious boy and did a lot of experiments without knowing how they would turn out.
We didn't had ready made kits with crystal diodes but experimenters kits. kind of the kits 150 experiments in one box.
We had very good electronics magazines and strong AM public radio station in our neighbourhood.
For an 8 years old boy it was an easy job making a capable receiver out of WWII style head phones, germanium diode and (squeezing) trimmer cap.
It was a big fun listening the remote foreign radio deep in the night when I should had taken a sleep.
No f*** chinese crap insed.
**WARNING, WILL ROBINSON!!! WARNING, WILL ROBINSON!!! THERE IS A ""KAREN"" IN YOU ROOM!! WARNING, WILL ROBINSON!!**
I love your videos ! The yellow coating is cadmium, be careful, don't breathe it ! I use latex gloves when handling and cleaning...... Question: How is it that sometimes they show using a resistor across the crystal earphone? I never used a resistor on my school built Graymark crystal set I built back in 1972....? Perry
Liquid rust remover dissolved the oxidized cadmium within minutes. It went down the drain. Then I sprayed it with clear lacquer. It got a matte finish, same as the screw heads, otherwise they'd look new..
Some sets need the resistor across the crystal earphone because the earphone acts like an open circuit. On my amplifier I had a 10K resistor across it.
My first radio was a crystal set (Phiips Radionics). Have a UK Science crystal radio set somewhere.....
Very interesting !!
Great video and memories I wish they still made things like this I had 1 it was on sw
Koniec filmu najlepszy . Pozdrawiam z Polski
Thanks, greetings to you, too. Dziękuję, pozdrawiam również
Found new old stock geranium diodes
ALWAYS use a "heat-sink" on the lugs of the variable-capacitor when soldering, so you do not melt or change the thickness of the plastic insulators.
I was very careful. I had a heat sink on the diode, too.
Excellent
It seems there are still many active AM radio stations in the US. It has been largely phased out over here in Northern Europe, last time I tried I could only pick up a single station.
I can pick up four or five here with a crystal set. More with a regen. I'm near Philadelphia, PA, so in a big metropolitan area.
If you build a Shortwave xtal set you can hear a few SW stations that still transmit in Europe
Feliz dia dos pais! Rádios de galena, incríveis!
Thank you!
Too funny, you got the belt. In my house it was the wooden spoon.
I feel stupid for believing the picture of the coiled wire was real until you took it off haha
You feel stupid? That coil looked absolutely real. It was a photo of the coil on the Philmore radio, printed on a color laserjet onto 90 weight paper.
Cool crystal radio
This is a great video lol great job😅
FWIW: As I understand it, at least some _Crystal Radio_ 'purists' consider using a _cat's whisker_ to be a _proper Crystal Set._
I do not know why for sure, but I have always thought {clear} _germanium crystal diodes,_ even though fairly common mass-produced items, had a certain 'beauty' to them.
Maybe because I have always thought clear hexagonal quartz rocks had a 'beauty' to them: _Transparent rocks._
At 15:31 I think thin plastic sandwich bags (like for school lunches) could be used for the insulators (dielectric). It may effect the capacitance slightly but it is worth a try.
Yes, that would work very well. The problem is I need to stamp out a bunch of them at once so they are all the same. Maybe I can find somebody with a laser cutter who can make them.
Please tell the story about the Chinese using glue instead of solder! Inquiring minds want to know!
The piezoelectric disk in the earplug was connected to the leads with glue. This resulted in a very high failure rate.
Here's an account of the problems:
www.usefulcomponents.com/main_contents/information/crystal_earpieces/crystal_earpiece_problems.html
Good one Mike!
Thanks, Jack!
2:32 Electroboom will love this🥰😂
Really cool
New favorite channel.
Hey man if you’ve never heard of Uncle Floyd check him out I think you might appreciate the humor.
👏👏👏👏awesome!!!😊😊👍💯🔝🥇
Zip codes started in mid'63; unlikely to be as late as '65.
So I got the date about right? The later sets didn't have a box and the coil was wound on a block of wood.
@@michaelsimpson5417 I'd say so- your box has no zipcode!
Good to know on the ear plug. Too bad, I would have bought several. Nothing like a good high impedance earpiece when needed.
It took me three days to convince Sloane they were bad. He was checking them by holding one lead and tapping the other on his stove, which was grounded. I told him to use an actual crystal radio. When he realized they were all bad I didn't hear back from him. Even if they were only $2 each, he must have lost $1000.
Great Great Great......
Da suchst du bis du grau bist.Meine besten Sets besitzen Variable Spulenkoppler mit 2 Spulen und Schottky Dioden(¹⁶ AM Stationen nachts...Die Wabenspulen baute ich selbst mit Q Messbrücke,Güte 192!❤ Bin jetzt alt und etwas krank😂❤
Loved this video - very funny. Will have to look out for DIY crystal sets - I wonder if Heathkit made any?
Heathkit made a crystal set that is hard to find today. I think it was model CR-1.
I love this video Mike ! Would love to see a sequel where you cut out some of your mom's 'cellophane' for the dielectric disks (or maybe use a set of annular hole-punches as used on carpets to receive bolts (eg. for chairlifts).. Leaving out the coil as a kid shows you were a bold innovator. Maybe you had the antenna wrapped around the attic several times instead ;-} . What I always wanted to do was use a germanium bridge rectifier for 'full-wave' detection, supposing it might give a better fidelity detection. But the mmv drops virtually eliminated the power. Still, it's a fascinating idea, and I didn't have your nifty high-input-impedance amp. Did you do a video on that?
The amp is just an LM386 module. There is a description of it here at 4 minutes, three seconds in.
ruclips.net/video/a2qDJZMiTik/видео.html
@@michaelsimpson5417 Thanks Mike .. I just caught that. Any link to a drawing would be nice - though I might figure it out. 🙃
@@garyknight8966 You can buy the amp module on ebay or Amazon, then just connect a speaker, a battery, and clip leads for the input. Here is one from Mike Peebles. The drawings look complicated but all those parts aren't required, and Mike built the amp from scratch.
www.peeblesoriginals.com/catalog/manuals/PO-386.pdf
Sounds like (no pun intended) that Sloan knew they were garbage. I have crystal earphones for my Six Million Dollar Man Crystal Radio and my Radio Shack 150-in-1 Electronics kit. I am going to keep mine in zip lock bags with a dessicant pack just like you did. I never knew the good ones were hygroscopic... that is good to know!
Actually, it took me three days to convince him they were bad. In the video I have a large bag of them. I have a photo that Sloane sent me of a box containing six of those bags, so he had about 600 of them. I don't know where he got them or whatever became of them. If you take one apart the crystal looks like a small piece of shattered glass.
Mike, that was an entertaining video. You made washing the disgusting dishes much more fun. And stop playing with that damn drill! You're going to Blind yourself.😊
Sad to say, crystal record player cartridges also use the same crystal, and they took dissolve in just the same way.
I never did get a crystal radio to work. My granddad showed me how to make one, and his always worked, but try as I might, I could never get a peep out of mine! 😞🤦
You need a pretty long antenna and a good ground. And a working earplug!
Ha! Ha! Ha! AS a solution to your ear pieces, would growing your own Roschell salt crystals be an option worth considering? I would like to give it a go myself and would like five of those earpieces please. Not the whole box, in case this works. I will let you know if I am successful. I like your sense of humor.
That thought crossed my mind, but there is a foil diaphragm connected to a post which sits on the crystal. You have to slice the foil to get inside which ruins it. Go to my website and scroll to the bottom for my email address. Send me your address and I'll send you some earplugs. www.analogdial.com/
At 3:52 yo got me! I gave you a like!
So all my effort with the fake radio paid off. I printed the graphic on a paper bag that I cut to the size of printer paper and put in the printer. It looks real!
doylestown, bucks county, KYW - You must be very close to me! I'm in Souderton!
I'm in North Wales!
@@michaelsimpson5417 wow we are close and have the same interests! That’s very cool! I restore old radios, phonographs, TV’s, anything electronic really! I’m also a vintage computer collector and repair guy! I am an IT admin for a day job.
But it does make sense to create replacement parts for those earplugs 😊
They're not really made to come apart. There's a post that sits on the crystal that is connected to a foil diaphragm, which is glued to the plastic housing. They're sealed up pretty well, I can't believe they were all damaged, but I have no idea where they've been stored for the past 60 years.
Such situation I experienced in 1973😅
Great skit in the video. About the roschell salt crystals, sad to hear about that, rest in peace all those crystal earpieces that could have been used. Is there any way to save or restore em all?
We considered putting metallic piezo elements in the housings, but what would be the point? You can already buy them. Without the Rochelle Salt crystal there is nothing special about them. The amount of earplugs shown in the video is just a portion. Sloane has the rest.
@@michaelsimpson5417 well i guess you could sell the housings or give the earplugs to some sort of a museum. I don't see any other kind of use for em
At 2:47 when I got older, getting punished had become a joke because my parents did not hurt us, they just wanted to make a point. I started to laugh when my mom punished me. While she was giving me the wooden spoon on my behind, I would pretend I was on the the phone, "Hello, child abuse hotline? Yeah, you better get over here right away....". She would stop and start laughing with me as I outgrew the effectiveness and just made of joke of it all.
That's a pretty funny story. When we were little my mom would grab us by the wrist and beat our back side with the belt, and we'd end up running in a circle trying to get away.
try gentle heat like direct sunlight to reform the rochelle crystals
I bet you worked on the special effects for *2OO1: A SPACE ODYSSEY.* 😉🤭
Would be better if you had made and shown the circuit diagram and explained on that basis.
I never thought to do that. It only has three parts, a coil, a capacitor and a diode.
@@michaelsimpson5417 ok Sir.
crystal earpieces dont work due to moisture ingress which ruins the salt. i had a few of these and did not work after a few years or o/p was very low. you can try heating them to remove the mositure
The crystals are in pieces. They look like bits of broken glass.
Could you please INDEX your videos? TIA
It would be interesting to find possible solutions to repair the headphones.
Unfortunately I can't add photos to the comments to show you the inside, but taking them apart basically ruins them.
Starting at about 00:23 in this video...
Michael is _feeling a little board._ 😉
LOL! Why yes, yes I am!