One of my hobbies is restoring old radios and tv's, vacuum tube era electronics. I was looking on epay for a good looking vintage radio for my car and i didnt find any i loved. So ive decided to build my radio from scratch, setting it up in the dash so you can actually see the tubes glow. Maybe this would look silly, but i rather love the idea. Recessing a shelf in my dash so the tubes could be lined up. Hiding the other components under the dash. So what do you guys think, hide the vacuum tubes or show them off?
dang...you beat me to it! Although getting nixie tubes to display useful information would probably require the use of a bunch of modern electronics.
Actually just to get them to tell the time... you could use a modern icb, timer and such that could be hidden. But while theyre cool, theyre overly bright i think. I saw a completely tube nixie clock once, it had around 21 tubes, was 8 inches tall and 2 foot by 2 foot square. So..completely impractical. Though i do think ill display my tubes for my custom radio. You might as well show your strong points and my strong points sure arent welding or fabrication.
Found this cool old steering column mount radio with under dash unit in an old barn I'm tearing down. I know it isn't one I made myself but I thought you might like to see it anyway. Shame it won't fit any of my columns.
If you are starting from scratch you might consider older open filament type tubes such as a 2A3 or 6B4 for audio and similar tubes for the RF end. They put out a lot of light and maybe there would be enough to use a map light. You would not have to deal with AC filament hum also.
I like the idea of the audio amp using vacuum tubes but the signal source could be that of an mp3 player or ipod. Best of both worlds...
Well if you use an ipod youre using a signal thats been coverted to digital, hooking that up to a tube amp would just covert digital to analog and.. you would not get the warm sound that you do get with a full tube setup, analog to analog. Theres still a few good oldies stations in my area, so ill be fine with that. To me its not truly about the amount of songs i can play at a glance but using a nearly forgotten eras technology. Its something im good at and i might as well show off my one strong point Plus, ive always dug turning on a caseless radio, seeing the tubes slowly warm up and then play. Giving that great warm sound that you can only get through a good setup.
There is actually a company that makes high end amps using valves for car audio. Can't beat the sound produced by tubes.
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