I guess I better update my personal info. I’m in Saskatchewan but there is very little here for stuff like this. The two radio’s I was given to work on both had bad vibrators making me use a tubing cutter to open up one and this was a surprise. These two radios have a pair of 6AQ5’s crammed tight beside the vibrator. When I put a good vibrator in it was getting very warm to hot leading me to wonder if this radio had excessive B+ current draw like my Mercury radio when the diodes were partially shorted causing the vibrator and transformer to heat up,make the fuse blow and lead me down the wrong path thinking the transformer was shorting out when my offshore multi meter said the diodes were good!! As it ended up the 6AQ5 is running at a fairly higher B+ and pushing out quite a bit of power and heat compared to my older 6V6. I was surprised at how much higher the voltages were in the schematics and when I opened up the vibrator can I discovered totally cooked and crisp broken wires from the pins to the vibrator. I replaced the wires and during this procedure noticed one set of the contacts were blue probably from an oozing buffer capacitor I chopped out to get this thing going. The vibrator buzzed for 5 minutes and died on the operating table leading me to realize this is only good for a donor for a circuit board to be stuffed in. My concern about the SS vibrator is the heat and we know how transistors can be ruined by extreme heat making me think of getting s slightly larger tin can, cutting out the ends, and placing it over the vibrator, mechanical or SS leaving a slight gap all around the vibrator and the can and using it as a reflective heat shield. Since Just Radios doesn’t sell vibrators and I don’t know if Sal’s does is making me realize I might have to dig into the forums discussing building these critters. I should be able to purchase solid state components nearby at Saskatoon and these should be easier to find so this is probably the way to go UNLESS I can find a source of these in Canada??
