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cfz2882

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Anyone build any heathkit electronics or have any built by someone else?-looks
like you could build anything from simple devices to big color TVs and home robots
(in the '70s a microwave oven was even offered)Heathkit quit about 1994.
I have a 14w mono tube amp('69 date codes) built by someone-they did a good job:)
also at a flea market in 1990,found an unbuilt small B/W TV kit from 1975 but
they wanted $50 for the kit and i didn't know if i would be able to get the set
aligned etc. for a reasonable cost after i had built it...
 
I built a few things as a kid, including a metronome, but nothing major. When I moved into this house, I found an unbuilt Morse code training kit - a key plus speaker. I built it and it works.
 
I built a Knight Kit short wave radio when I was a sophomore in high school. The item was the "Star Roamer" radio. Of course it didn't work when I turned it on after about 6 weekends of working on it. So after three weeks of checking all the connections we took it back to Allied Radio and they said they would diagnose it.
It turned out to be tons of cold joints in the soldering. The instructions didn't tell you how to solder and nobody I knew at the time knew how. So they fixed it for about $40.00, the same price you could have gotten it for fully assembled.

But I did get lots of use out of it. Of course it was another item that got thrown away by my parents when I was off at university. "You don't need all this junk" they would say. And my father would then remind me that when you go into the military they throw away all the clothing and possessions you came with. So I should be happy with what I have left.

There was a guy down the street who built a Heatkit color TV. I always wanted to go see it, but we didn't really know the people well and my father said you just don't go knocking on peoples doors and ask to see their television. Ah, the ignorance. I am willing to bet that the guy who built it would have been proud to show it off.
 
 
In the late 1970s / early 1980s I did an alarm clock (which I still use), an indoor-outdoor thermometer (long gone), and a wall clock (which I still have but the battery holder broke and I've not yet made an effort to repair it).

dadoes++12-4-2011-12-28-34.jpg
 
clock display

did those late -'70s clocks use LED display?-i saw an older,say 1973,heathkit clock
that used neon gas type displays-not "nixie",but the later type with segments
positioned like a LED display.
 
My dad built a Heathkit hi-fi back in the 50's housed in an older radio or tv cabinet with the two front doors, the speaker was housed in a separate corner unit. Must have some pictures of it somewhere over at moms house. He and my uncle who lived next door spent a lot of time poking through those stores, Lafayette was another one. The last Heathkit store I remember seeing was in Vancouver (Burnaby on Kingsway I believe) sometime prior to 1986 when I moved to Calgary. They also had a home organ kit as well, it was a Thomas.
 
Surely did build Heathkits

my first being in 1964 while in 8th grade. Back then DIY electronics was a huge hobby, starting right after the war. I first built a monophonic tube amplifier that used 7591 output tubes, and used it to provide stereo, the other channel power being from a Harman Kardon Recital II receiver, and later built more advanced kits... the DIY tube stuff started me on the road to a great love of electronics, later to a career of teaching science, and finally in retirement writing articles about the legacy tube audio manufacturers of the '40s to '60s for the tube audio magazine "Vacuum Tube Valley". RIP Heathkit, a huge influence in my life!
 
Not Heath, but a plethora of EICOs and a few Knights. Built first stereo (HF-81) when I was 12, worked the second time I tried it (I left one wire off). Still use the Dyna PAT-4 from 1969, after an update in 1985. Satisfaction of building them, and saving 1/3 of the factory price.
 
I built the 25" color TV as  kid, lasted for years.  I even designed and built a cabinet for it.  It's tucked away in one of the attics, thought about pulling a few of the circuit boards out and making some sort of art display with them as a memento.
 
Yes, building electronics from kits was very popular in the mid 60's. I also thought it was educational. In fact, I used the radio receiver as a science project for my high school science class. I explained what the capacitors, resistors, tubes and tuning capacitor all did and how they related to each other. I got an A on that one.

Zenith eventually bought out Heathkit in 79'. According to Heathkit's website they will soon be bringing back electronic kits for people to build again!
 
i wonder what projects the "new"heathkit will offer-i have built kits from ramsey
and velleman,especially velleman-motor speed controls,strobes,thermal controls,
small amps,LED VU meters...
Quite a few very appealing kits in my latest ramsey catalog...
 
fo me Heathkits and Dynakits-for Dyna ones-several stereo 70 power amps.and one preamp and a stereo 400 power amp,and a stereo 120.for Heathkits-test gear,clocks and the weather stations-radio stations loved these since they were cheap and the station engineer(Me)could assemble it and get it running.for both Dynakit and Heathkit they had large wall size schematics and drawings-made it much better.Have the drawings for these and the books around somewhere.the amps are long sold-but still have one of the assembly books and schematics kicking around somewhere.the Dyna amps were used by myself at home-and at radio stations for studio and transmitter site monitor amps.
 
Heathkits and others

Around 1973 I built the electronic clock kit. I still have it, and use it for the clock next to my computer. It looks just like the one in "dadoes" post, but my display segments are orange. (I have impaired color vision, to me the ones in dadoes' post look green. The temperature device looks orange.) The display is not Nixie tubes but some flat 7-segment things. It works great, but has no battery backup to retain the time over power interruption.

Over the years I built many Heathkit items: another newer electronic clock (with battery backup) VoltOhm Meter, AM clock radio, capacitive discharge ignition, stereo in a cabinet for someone I knew in college. Only the CDI was a disappointment.

I also built a few Dynakit stereo components: AM-FM tuner, PAT-4 preamp. Power amps were kits from Southwest Technical Products. The first PAT-4 was stolen in a breakin. I replaced it with another, which was also stolen a few years later. Noticing the trend, I did not replace the second one.

Building the kits was always a hassle. Because of my color vision I could not read the ID bands on resistors reliably, and I had to measure each one with a meter to ensure it was the correct item. Eventually I lost interest in kit building.
 
Built a Heathkit AM/FM table radio as a project with my father. I was only in fourth grade and the electronics/physics soon surpassed what I knew as a nine year old, so while hooking up the crystal diode was fun, toward the end I was just following directions and soldering part A to part B, with no understanding of what I was actually building. Sound was ok. Most of the time I listened with an earphone so as to avoid disturbing my sister, whose bedroom was adjacent to mine.
 
ps where were they sold??

Radio Shack?
I recall that Radio Shack's house brand used to be Lafayette or something similar. Was HeathKit sold via Radio Shack or through some other channel?
 
Lafayette

Lafayette was another catalog-order electronics merchant. In the late 60s and maybe beyond that, they had a retail store in Warren MI which I frequented.

Also back in those days was Olson Electronics, a catalog merchant with retail stores as well. I retrieved and revived a few things from their junk/clearance table.

Wasn't Radio Shack's captive brand "Realistic"?
 
In fact, right across the street from Allied Radio on N. Western Av in Chicago was an Olsen Electronics store. Going into Allied was like going into a major league department store with everything laid out very nicely for the customer to examine.

Olsen, on the other hand was like walking into a cheap Dollar store. Most everything was on pegs on the wall. It was controlled disorder. But I could have spent days looking in both stores for the electronic wonders. Allied had a special section for their Knight kits as well as a repair facility on the second floor.
 
leaves a bad taste in my mouth...

When I was young (Denny's still had a pterodactyl egg omelet on the menu) I built a Heathkit AR-14 receiver...one of their first that was solid state. I already had a couple of used tube receivers and wanted something high-tech. After assembly I plugged it in and switched it on because I wanted to see the dial light up. Well it did, then there was a faint zap and then nothing. I was not a happy kid. I ended up having to send it back to the Heathkit people for repair which cost me over a third of what I paid for it. They were nice enough to explain to me that without a load connected (speakers) the output transistors would short out...there was no protection fuse and nothing to warn you of this in the instruction manual.
I kind of knew when I opened the box and saw all those resistors and diodes and stuff that I'd gotten in over my head.

twintubdexter++12-6-2011-12-52-1.jpg
 
Wasn't Radio Shack's captive brand "Realistic&#3

It was one of their house names. I'm not sure how many they had--they seemed to have other names. Sort of like Sears, I guess, with many different house names. Also like Sears: they farmed out the actual making of the product to others--at least in some cases.
 
Heathkit engineering

was completely in house. They were mostly mail order direct marketed products. They started right after WWII making kit airplanes, of all things, using surplus parts and quickly segued to DIY test equipment like VOMs, o-scopes and signal generators, then around '53-54 capitalizing on the new HiFI craze brought out a W-1/W-2/W-3/W-4 and A-7/9 line of Williamson amps, Ham radio stuff, by around '58 the respected W-5 and W-6 amp using Peerless (Altec) transformers, small products like clock radios, next into transistor audio and TVs and even the Thomas Color Tune organ, finally computers and educational products. Love to see them get back into audio and Ham products, so we can re-live our childhood!
 
electronic organ

My geometry teacher in high school built a 2 manual electric organ from Heathkit. It was the church model and sounded ok for electronics of that period (1970).
 
Will someone out there------PLEASE BRING BACK DYNAKIT Hi-Fi amp kits.Esp the tubed classics such as the St70 and the Mk2 60W monoblock.would be SO interested.todays tubed amps are just TOO OVERPRICED!!And a note to the future Heathkit folks-besides the solid state Hi-Fi-Please bring back the Williamson tubed Hi-fi amp kits.Would think with the sudden reinterest in tubes as with LP's the Heath and Dynaco tubed amps would sell like crazy-they were simple-----BUT WORKED!!I would love to reamp my home theater with tubed amps-just want to use those instead.Lets see--3 Mk2 for the front channels-and two St70 for the rear.one channel unused-serves as a spare!
 
A little Dynakit tip...

having built/owned a Mk III amp/ PAS3-x preamp rig 35 years ago and several others over the decades past, and having listened/reviewed most Dynacos at Vacuum Tube Valley (RIP) my feeling is that the ST-35 was/is the real sleeper of the bunch - that is, if they've managed to truly duplicate the superb Z-565 output transformer, one of the best of it's type ever.
 
tube amp kits

several years ago velleman had a stereo tupe amp kit-IIRC,had four EL34s as well
as a few smaller tubes sticking up out of the chrome plated chassis.As i remember
a fiberglass PC board was used.Made in belgium,the kit was something like$899 with
a fully assembled version offered for around $1200
 

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