HFU HF Underground
General Category => General Radio Discussion => Topic started by: ChrisSmolinski on October 20, 2018, 1449 UTC
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Meet Montreal's 'radio doctor', the man who practises the dying trade of repairing electronics
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/meet-montreal-s-radio-doctor-the-man-who-practises-the-dying-trade-of-repairing-electronics-1.4866324
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Cool story bro, thanks for the link!
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Now that is what an electronics store should look like !
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I dropped in a few times when visiting friends in Montreal. He might have one of the better valve collections in eastern Canada! He's a nice guy; I hope that he stays around for a while.
Radio Hovsep
5945 Avenue du Parc
Montréal, QC H2V 4H4
radiohovsep.com (http://radiohovsep.com)
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A couple of things here. First, that's a fabulous hoard of parts and radios.
There are others , he's by no means the last. There is plenty of information published on the internet for anyone in the future wishing to make an old radio viable again. The everyday AA5 ( 5 tube , the most common) most people can be instructed and electrically have it working with about 3 to 4 hrs instruction, not 50 years he has romanticized in the video. They are all the same, there are not many variations of the Superhetrodyne and changed little until the 1960s. Even after that , only components , the basic principles didn't change. Of course some radios will present more advanced technical problems to solve, this is fairly rare. Because most were abandoned in working condition for newer ones , then all together when the transistor came along , there is a standard procedure (replace power supply capacitors and any paper capacitors) . If it doesn't work after that there is usually only one thing wrong that caused radio to quit you must find . Once you break down the radio into sections in your mind, ( he mentions this) finding a problem is not an educational leap as they are fairly simple. So I dispute there won't be someone always out there that can fix one.
Second, it's not possible to support yourself fixing them. The cost of shipping heavy chassis and an hourly rate equal to today's market makes the cost more than they want to spend for most people, unless they are determined to have one and plenty of disposable cash. He would need to be pulling in several hundred $ a day to claim it's more than a museum .
So, it's not that there's no interest in vintage radio , there are time and economic factors here. This has been shown by others who have tried including myself. I don't believe repair is supporting his business functionally. It is a hobby or passion more or less.
More power to him however, he is the big league of whats left, but when he is gone all of it will constitute a collectors bonanza. There are people salivating over the article pictures as if it were porn , I guarantee.
I personally have about 50 vintage radios I fixed myself , and about half a wall of tubes like in the picture. E bay and it's ilk drove down the price of the remaining stocks of tubes ( which is 100 times more than anyone thought prior to internet) except for the rare ones which subsequently went through the roof. I recently sold a single tube for a lowball price of $65, 2 hrs after listing.
I love it though, thanks for the link, I'd love to visit with him.
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Good points. A survey of any of Shango066's video's on youtube would give anyone a proper baptism into the world of tube tv/radio repair.
I have thought recently....what are we going to do when the surplus supply of tubes is finally gone? Especially things like converter tubes.
Anyone know where I can get some thorium? Might have to start making my own tubes...
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Another great source for electronics repair is Mr. Carlson's Lab youtube videos. Paul Carlson, VE7ZWZ, has 114 repair videos on youtube....https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=UUU9SoQxJewrWb_3GxeteQPA
This guy has an amazing amount of test equipment.
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Both of those guys are top notch.
I'm not sure if they still do, but the Russians and Chinese made tubes through the 90s and I think the Svetlana and Sovtec factories resumed into 2k under the name JJ tubes . Guitar players that preferred Vacuum tube amplifiers ( many of your favorite bands use them) and recently I walked around behind a local band and saw a tube amp cranking out a Dire Straits cover 8) most likely Soviet tubes. That was mostly driving the resurgence in manufacturing. It did supplement existing stocks of certain radio tubes such as 6V6 power amplifiers and 5Y3 AC rectifiers (sp?).
I'm not worried , there are plenty of NOS that have surfaced left over in tremendous numbers when the technology suddenly became obsolete in 1962ish. Some of the converter tubes Redhat mentioned are in fact short and likely will not be remade, mainly impacting the very popular Zenith Transoceanic.
Here ya go Redhat , have at it 8) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EzyXMEpq4qw
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Great video, another one of my favourites ;) He has a website with some detailed PDF's on vacuum tube construction, albeit in french...
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Lol back when real men made their own valves and wrote their own drivers.