Those were stacked selenium diodes and i remember they used to be common especially in battery chargers. My Macaroni in my 50 Mercury worked like crap even though I tested all of the tubes and chose the best I had in my hoard but there was poor volume, gain, etc. leading me to suspect lousy B+ so I started checking all voltages after Don sent Don a schematic and what an eye opener!! Voltages were way down, 75+% of the resistors I tested were poor to very poor and rooting around in whats left made me discover a number of these were also bitched. As a last resort I was forced to use the best of my poor resistors to get by until I break down and purchase and some of the replacement resistors were slightly smaller than what they were supposed to be but now my audio isn’t garbled and distorted when I turn up the volume like it was before. Very little volume with super bad distortion led me to believe the voltages were way down but now we are a bit on the high side, and the volume control is just slightly turned up on the stronger stations like barely a 1/4 inch rotation. Another forum led me to this place called Sal’s with much better prices on the Capacitors BUT I sent an email with my address to try to figure out how bad the shipping is. His kits are half the price but the shipping is a mystery?? While I was at it I also inquired about what he can do for resistor kits compatible to Just Radios for all sizes because if I’m going through all of this trouble to get what once was easy to get but now isn’t I might as well break down and go for the works. Keep in mind that Just Radios prices are US dollars so $99 beaver skins for a kit vs $45 for Sal’s of the same quantity and type makes me inquire!! $90 for two kits VS $200 for two kits leads me to wonder if I would still save a bundle even after paying shipping and swindle/corruption fees at the border.but we will find out and perhaps if i slap down a sizable order perhaps he can help out.
On this forum they also mentioned the prices were much better at Sal’s as well granted they get shipping included but at Just Radios yes the shipping is free but the prices are double.
http://antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=251139&view=previous
http://www.tuberadios.com/ http://www.tuberadios.com/capacitors/
This was after a google for capacitors and resistors and on this forum the consensus is mainly about the same thing thats on my mind which is where do we get the goodies.
As for my google and a search for a solid state vibrator, yes solid state vibrators popped up including web sites and forums discussing how to build these and what problems you can encounter such as the fact that there is a delay or off time with the mechanical vibrator but the solid state is too fast or good with NO delay making a way of factoring in an artificial delay required to reduce increased power consumption and stress on the transformer and the B+ can even rise. This was a good search but also absolute crap popped up while searching for vibrators!! I could care less about sites showing what Donovan sang about in his song Mellow Yellow!! I want a vibrator to make my 67 year old radio happy!
