Ham fest score

[gui_tarzan]

I went to a local one yesterday and there was a guy selling NOS JAN tubes, never used, mostly radio stuff, most dated 1963/64 and stamped "Raytheon". But the boxes all say "MFD BY RADIO CORP OF AMERICA". The 12AX7s he had were a mix of long and short grey plates, but I scavenged eight black plate 5751s. Had I known what he was actually going to charge me I would have bought the rest - $5 each. Singles were ten bucks each. Now I wish I had gotten his name too, doggone it!

I also got five JAN 5Y3s, Sylvanias, brown socket for $40. Plus I picked up an old radio with a "custom" wood faceplate that has a Thordarson 22S74 OT and a good sized PT, a pair of 274B rectifiers, a pair of shorty 5881s and a 6N5 magic eye tube. I'm geeked! That was well worth the $20 I spent on it.

[Chuck H]

Awesome

When I lived in the bay area of Cali I use to go into Halted Electronics. I think they're still there, but I'd be surprised if they're setup the same as I remember. As few as ten years ago I would walk to the back wall where they had dozens of large cardboard boxes of pulled tubes and a tube tester. I'd spend a couple of hours going through them and find maybe six or ten 12ax7 types, many 6V6's, 5Y3's and the occasional prize. My favorite score there was a pair of Tung Sol 5881's that matched up in strong condition. I don't think I ever paid more than two dollars for a preamp tube and maybe four for power tubes and rectifiers. I found 12ax7's made by Telefunken, Bugle Boy, RCA, Mullard, Phillips, etc. Of course, pulls from boxes aren't all good. The tester they had on hand would cull the grossly bad ones and I'd have to toss a couple from each batch once they were tested in an actual guitar amp. But it was always a great deal on some great stuff.

I guess I'm saying that I know the feeling

[km6xz]

Halted was in Sacramento and Rohnert Park also but they closed the Sacramento version about 5 years ago. They were one of dozens of industrial surplus that came from all the high tech companies in the area before it was all taken over by software. I doubt there is much industrial surplus anymore because there is almost no industry left.
Chuck, if you were there 15 years ago, the monthly electronic fleamarkets at Foothill College and in Livermore were places to go. Mostly it was test gear collector/resellers, amateur radio, a little computer gear. That was before eBay drove up the prices of equipment. I had a VW van I used only for those monthly runs from Marin. Arriving at 6am and staying until noon, my van would be full of test gear on the way back, mostly HP, Fairchild, Tektronix, GenRad and Heath(IG-5218 audio generators). I probably spent less than $15,000 over the years equipping 24 work benched with top, but older gear that included tube curve tracers, spectrum analysers, sweep generators, distortion analyzers, wave meters, counters, 400 series HP AC meters(FL GL etc), voltage and current metered variacs, RF generators, waveform generators, early digital scopes, highly regulated HP lab power supplies up to 2000watts, lab reference standards, bridges. Much of the gear came from people who built or designed the equipment in the companies of the area so it was a place where 90% of the people there were degreed engineers or serious geeks.
Now, any gear that is available goes on eBay and even the junk sells because the buyers don't realize it is junk and why they got it relatively cheap. Back then, it was possible to try it and at least inspect it well before trading for it or buying. So most of what I got was in good shape with current cal certificates. The last piece I got was a Tektronix scope with a cal sticker of 2001, just before I moved here with it.
That kind of geek heaven can't really have a enough density of geeks to have regular events like that anymore. There are not that many people working with hardware electronics anymore in the US.

[Chuck H]

The Halted in question was the one in Santa Clara, Ca. Not the Sac or Rohnert Park stores. I'm sure they've all suffered, but AFAIK the Santa Clara store is still there somehow.

Unfortunately I never got to the trade shows when I was living in the place where they happen. I'm just an "amp guy" more than an electronics guy so I was never as enticed by the bench gear deals as you or some of the other repair techs here would be. Example: I have "a scope" but I can't even tell you the model off the top of my head. I know it works dandy for what I need it to do. My bench gear is limited to a scope, DMM, sig gen, dummy load, light bulb current limiter and a soldering station. Plus misc. alligator clip leads, soldering tools, etc. Pretty much a builders bench and not specializing in repair at all.

I'd be much more interested in that sort of thing now. But I don't live there anymore. A few of our members live in that area though.

[g1]

They're still in Santa Clara, going by "HSC".
HSC Electronic Supply - Silicon Valley's Electronic Marketplace