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700

I have one of these: https://pic8.co/sh/byQBvc.png on my bench.

With the addition of a 1N34A, or any of the Soviet-era Ge diodes, you have a radio. It's only good for strong local stations, but we have plenty of those. It's great for dumping audio into a set where you're not sure how well the inputs are isolated - no parts to burn out if there's B+ on the input. Other than that, it's just kind of cool to sit there with an earpiece and a coil of wire and listen to the radio with no power input at all.

I have one of these: https://pic8.co/sh/byQBvc.png on my bench. With the addition of a 1N34A, or any of the Soviet-era Ge diodes, you have a radio. It's only good for strong local stations, but we have plenty of those. It's great for dumping audio into a set where you're not sure how well the inputs are isolated - no parts to burn out if there's B+ on the input. Other than that, it's just kind of cool to sit there with an earpiece and a coil of wire and listen to the radio with no power input at all.

(post is archived)

[+] [deleted] • 1 pt
[–] • 1 pt (edited )

Played around with a set us kids found up on the attic of our (very old) house.

It had a detector crystal made from ?lead sulfide? (IIRC, it sort of looked like graphite) and a thin wire you scratched along the surface, looking for a "loud" position.

Later I built one with a Germanium diode from the contents of a magazine that came with science-y stuff to assemble.

[–] • 2 pts

Almost anything that rectifies can be used as the detector. Absolutely beautiful.