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lightman1 wrote: »

I bet I could out ugly you.....

Oh, really?

Car radios had tubes in 'em into the 1960s. A whole line of low-voltage "space charge" tubes was developed very late in the tube era, specifically because cost-effective high-frequency transistors lagged audio-frequency transistors in availablity to the consumer electronics industry by ca. a decade.

Until the late 1950s/early 1960s, car radios used fairly normal tubes, requiring relatively high plate voltages -- the power supplies for those radios were clunky affairs using an electromechanical gizmo called a vibrator (get your minds outta the gutter! ) to generate dirty AC (EDIT: actually, pulsed DC) that could then be used with a fairly normal "linear" (as we'd say nowadays) transformer/filter type HV power supply to generate the voltages needed by all-tube car radios well into the 1950s.

Scan_Pic0034 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

The space charge tubes required only the 12-ish volt DC available in a car to operate. These tubes bridged the gap between all tube and all solid state auto electronics.

Today, these odd little tubes are easy to find and cheap, which has led to a certain amount of interest in using them for... well.. whatever nefarious purposes folks can dream up.

http://www.junkbox.com/electronics/lowvoltagetubes.shtml

Pete Millett designed and a DIY'able hybrid headphone amp/linestage using space charge tubes. I've built a couple of these (his original design, as published in audioXpress) over the years; tonnes of fun they are, too.

http://www.pmillett.com/hybrid_head.htm

realhifiglows by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

PS I remember that Panasonic car hifi -- never saw/heard one, though. There is a company specializing in auto tube audio, FWIW: http://milbert.com/
The sum total of my knowledge of 'em is that they exist.

Pretty sure that the car rekkid playas that celebrities as disparate as Lawrence Welk and Muhammad Ali were rockin' back in the day used tubes, too!





Just in case any of all y'all young whippersnappers thought that your generation invented distracted driving!

mlistens03 wrote: »

Wow, I didn't know that! Very interesting. I guess I should've thought about what they would've done before SS amplifiers were invented.
Thanks for sharing!
Real quick question, did they ever use shock absorbers for housing the tubes, so they didn't get damaged by being bounced around every which way?

They used tubes in missles * and hydrogen bombs. They're actually pretty tough.




In fact, no, there weren't generally any special considerations made for radio tubes in cars -- though shielding them from static generated by the engine ignition system was pretty important

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* In fairness, the tubes used in really harsh environments were typically ruggedized versions of the ones we all know and love. In fact, some of them are highly sought after (i.e., expen$ive) today for hifi use. Imagine that?!



source: http://www.itishifi.com/search?q=RCA+red

actually, the true "guided missle tubes" were typically made by folks like Bendix
http://www.timeelect.com/vacuum-tubes-tc-myths-and-snake-oil-marketing.html

I ran a pair of Westinghouse branded 5962s in the "Simple 2A3" amp for quite a while. Not sure that they sounded better than (ahem) lesser 6SN7s, but they sho'nuff do look cooler.

Westies closeup by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

I've since gone (back) to higher-mu voltage amplifier tubes (6SL7 -- for which the amp was designed!), and, unfortunately, I don't have a pair of "Special Red" 5961s to use in it!

EDIT: meh, I'd have to add a separate filament transformer to handle 5961s in the amp -- I forgot