Whatever happened to Heathkit? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Cerebus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 07:53:10 pm
content: An article in/at 'Electronic Design' that might be of interest to folks of a certain age.QuoteArticle here:Whatever happened to Heathkit?

author: JoeN
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 08:12:25 pm
content: A web search for later information that this article (2009) shows a second bankruptcy of the Heathkit Education company in 2011. Their site has a holding placard with a 2017 copyright date and a notice that they may have a product announcement coming up. I wonder who owns the rights at the current time?http://www.heathkit.com/

author: med6753
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 08:16:13 pm
content: I built many Heathkits in my younger years. Sold most of them over the years. Wish I hadn't. Still have some in my collection. First stereo system was AA-14 amplifier and AJ-14 tuner.The article makes mention of Ramsey offering kits. No longer true. They got out of the kit biz last year.

author: Towger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 08:19:04 pm
content: The site works here, but it is a marketing fail to sell kits without showing photos of the the internal gubbins.https://shop.heathkit.com/shop/product/most-reliable-clocktm-gc-1006-26

author: calexanian
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 09:14:59 pm
content: This is old news. The name Heathkit has been awash in attempted marketing BS for several years now. A few years ago somebody tried to turn it into a educational tool company tryint to sell to schools and such. It did not work out. Now whoever has it has no clue how to run an electronics business and it is just floundering. Eventually the name will go to yet another interest and it will start all over until somebody who really know what they are doing gets ahold of it. Its super sad to see.

author: LaserSteve
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 09:22:22 pm
content: At least Ramsey has posted their manuals, good for them. Sad to see the go, but they really had stopped kit development work long ago.S.

author: Seekonk
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 09:36:24 pm
content: Heathkit is even getting to old to be a brand name. The real question is why hasn't someone in China seriously gone into this kit market. They have the parts and labor structure to make it cost effective, certainly the engineering talent. I just got a kit from there. No schematic or instructions, just a bag of parts and a board to figure out where the parts go. There were options a neophyte wouldn't figure out. I've been there and all they know is price. There are no brand names known of in China.

author: eugenenine
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 09:57:16 pm
content: My teacher in vocational school built a couple heathkits. By the late 80's the quality had gone down, he said he called tech support because the TV he bought couldn't get a sharp focus and was told it was never intended to have a quality picture, it was intended to be educational.Out high school electronics course was based on heathkits manuals. I ask him for a set when I graduated and still have them.

author: ocw
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 10:10:31 pm
content: While the mentioned site still works, Heathkit's new web site reflecting its current owners ishttp://www.d8apro.com/

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 10:42:53 pm
content: Quote from: ocw on April 01, 2017, 10:10:31 pmJust me, or bad choice of url?"Date a Pro"

author: SingedFingers
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 01, 2017, 11:03:22 pm
content: What happened to Heathkit?Their only advantages disappeared:1. It was cheaper to buy a Heathkit than something ready made.2. It was possible to build something equal to a commercial ready made product.Now my father was the ultimate cheap arse and his attitude, mirrored in the Far East, may have contributed to the demise somewhat of such companies. He waited until a colleague bought the latest Heathkit doohickey, borrowed the manual for a couple of nights and proceeded to scribble out all the schematics on paper. He'd then meticulously cost cut the entire device, removing features he didn't need, buy the shittiest reject parts he could get his hands on (bi-pre-pak junk and rolls of wire stolen from BT vans) then go and build it. I inherited a DMM, power supply, GDO, frequency counter and audio generator from him which are in various states of disrepair after being in storage for 30-40 years. None of them work and I've been restoring them slowly for about 2 years. China, Hong Kong were the industrial versions of him

author: JoeN
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2017, 12:31:16 am
content: This part is only available today. Buy it now!https://shop.heathkit.com/shop/product/xx-0401-mythological-widget-15XX-0401 Mythological Widget$201704.01You know you need one of these.You're just not sure why.There's something really compelling about devices that are designed for a clear purpose.Form follows function. You don't want to experience the function. But you sure can imagine it from its form. Indeed, the mind boggles.Not meant for everyone. But maybe for you, around midnight, mid-October in San Ramon. Otherwise only once annually in early April. Wouff Wouff.

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2017, 12:56:01 am
content: One of the first kits the new Heathkit came out with was a TRF AM radio -AM RadioThis is funny -"AM has the most diverse collection of programs: News, sports, weather, talk, popular music. "Popular music? Huh? On AM radio? Whoever wrote that doesn't have a clue.And this -"Take it anywhere. The beach, on a family vacation, to your friend's house. "The beach? An AM radio on the beach. You'd be laughed off the beach if anyone saw you with that thing. Plus, the thing is $150. Who's going to take their carefully built kit that has an Afro-Asian Padauk front panel to the beach and get sand kicked in it?No, I'm afraid they are stuck in a time warp.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2017, 05:04:06 am
content: I remember being a kid and drooling over this exact catalog:http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Catalogs/Allied-Catalogs/Heathkit-1969.pdfI actually managed to buy one of the kits:What you have to realise is that I would have been ecstatic to have almost anything in this catalog. They had colour TV kits with remote controls when Australia still had years of Black&White only TV. It was like looking at products from another planet. The only old cheap gear available locally at that time was war surplus-type stuff - terrible. A cheap second hand oscilloscope back then was single channel with 500kHz bandwidth on a tiny curved screen in a case that one person could not lift.When you look at this catalog, hardly anything had a single IC - in most kits the most complex part was often the valve or transistor.I struggle to imagine how any modern kit catalog could be as mouth watering and desirable as this 1960's catalog was at the time. I wish there was an old-style Heathkit around, but I cannot see it happening. I think time has moved on.

author: Nusa
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2017, 05:44:15 am
content: I built that GR-64 kit as a kid too -- my Dad paid half the cost on such projects to encourage me. With a truly crappy soldering iron, although I didn't know it at the time! Strung 60 feet of antenna wire to the willow tree from my 2nd floor bedroom window for an antenna. Worked well enough, until the antenna took a lightning strike a few years later. No trace of that wire was ever found, and the power switch/volume pot was a black ruin inside.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2017, 06:05:28 am
content: Quote from: Nusa on April 02, 2017, 05:44:15 amThat was one of the amazing things. All you needed was a crappy soldering iron, cutters and a screw driver. I seem to remember they even had a switch inside that turned on an internal 455KHz generator so you could tune the IF section using the signal strength meter.QuoteHad the same kind of wire from my bedroom window. Managed to get the US and the Netherlands so that was exciting. It was a pretty decent radio and I used it until I was given a nice Sony AM/SW radio. Don't think I turned it on again after that.

author: calexanian
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2017, 04:07:37 am
content: Quote from: JoeN on April 02, 2017, 12:31:16 amThats a pretty good price for a genuine Wouff-Hong. I have not seen one in many years, and not one used in anger in decades!

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2017, 06:49:23 pm
content: I built a few Heathkits when I was a kid in the 80s, even by then though it was not any cheaper than buying something ready made. It was more fun though, and some of the kits were still somewhat unique.As has already been mentioned, what killed them was that it became cheaper to let the machine build something than to package up all the parts and ship them out as a kit. Electronic equipment is insanely cheap today, almost all of it is mass produced on automated assembly lines, there is no savings in assembling it by hand because the alternative is no longer paying someone else to assemble it by hand.I don't know why the Chinese companies can't seem to produce decent manuals, I mean write the manual once and then it's done and you can include it with every kit.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2017, 07:26:03 pm
content: Same thing happened in my other hobby, model railroading. It's just cheaper to have the Chinese factory assemble the kit and sell it at a premium as "ready to run". Company may sell a kit for $10. For $1-$2 more they can have it assembled, and then sell it for $30. Kind of a no-brainer where profits are concerned. Kits are now few and far between, mostly NOS, not new production. Added benefit of not having to deal with customers who break a part during assembly, or a part is missing, and having to have staff to answer the phones plus shipping costs to send out replacement bits. One of the electronics guys sells his turnout controller as a 'kit' - all you have to solder on are 2 LEDs, 2 pushbuttons, and a 3 pin header for the servo cable. The rest is all SMD and comes pre-soldered. The kit version is a whole $1.50 cheaper than the assembled one. I'm guessing the only reason he even does this is that those parts (all through hole) can't be done automatically by his board assembler so he has to do that much by hand anyway. I bought some both ways, it doesn't take long to add the components,s plus you don't even have to get the LEDs right-way round. They're 2 lead bicolor LEDs and you can set the color being displayed via the firmware on the thing so if it's green and you want read you just hit the sequence to swap the color.Combine this with the demands of the "right now" generation and it's no wonder there are no kits. You see it everywhere. Kits exist in some specialty areas - like those $20 transistor testers. Most of the shops sell them assembled and in kit form. I wonder what the breakdown in sales is - it's mostly a specialized product and most anyoen who even knows what to do with such a thing almost certainly has the skills to put the kit together. And even the inclination to do so.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2017, 10:46:45 pm
content: I never done a Heathkit from purchase to assembly but this thread makes me think : what kind of people worked there, were they contracted part time engineers from rf industry, military, things like that? Who were those folks ?

author: SkyMaster
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2017, 11:17:43 pm
content: Quote from: Bud on April 04, 2017, 10:46:45 pmHeathkit was huge. Below is a picture of the Heathkit factory in 1968.

author: rfeecs
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2017, 11:23:20 pm
content: Quote from: Bud on April 04, 2017, 10:46:45 pmThere are lots of sites dedicated to Heathkit, most of them out of date.Heath history:http://www.heathkit-museum.com/hvmhistory.shtmlStories about Heath from people that worked there:http://ww_heco.home.mindspring.com/wwheco2/index.html

author: Selectech
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 04, 2017, 11:43:11 pm
content: I built a GR-64 when I was in high school ( 1964 / 1965 ish ). Had a long wire antenna on it and did a lot of shortwave reception. Lots of QSL cards. Kept it for a long time, was my workshop radio more recently, but sold it off a few years ago.In university I got one of the small oscilloscopes given to me and an audio generator.I built a Heathkit AR-14 receiver in 1969 and had it for a long time, then gave it to a friend that needed a tuner / amp.Lots of good memories & fun with their stuff.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2017, 01:17:22 am
content: My first experience with Heathkit was repairing a dorm TV around 1970. The good news - the manual was still around. The bad news - it was an easy fix. A 1/2 watt resistor that was dissipating 2W had given up the ghost. Over the next couple of decades I built several Heathkits including an oscilloscope, a color TV and their computer terminal plus a number of smaller ones. The TV turned out to be a repeat of my dorm experience. A generally nice, but flawed design. It had features that couldn't be found in commercial sets of the time, cost a bit more than those sets, and took many hours of assembly. And then many hours of maintenance before I finally gave up on unobtainium parts.I think in a nutshell this is one of the things that did Heathkit in. The quality of their products was uneven. The ham gear had a good reputation, as did most of the simple test equipment. I have heard good things about the audio gear. The oscilloscopes were middling for the time. If they had stuck to their ham business, along with the related test gear they might still be in business. But they spread into areas they weren't as good at, and where their following was less skilled and less loyal. When market conditions changed they were in no position to respond.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2017, 01:14:03 pm
content: Their computer stuff was pretty decent, except they had to come up with their own bus for the H8 instead of using the then-standard S-100 bus. I was not much of a fan because I learned on a processor that was hex based, compared to the 8080's octal based instructions set. What I always wanted was the LSI-11 based machine. The H89 wasn't a bad CP/M machine, all in one design. But by that time the writing was on the wall and MSDOS was the future. This is around the time Zenith bought them, and they started selling aseembled stuff under the Zenith name, with Heath reserved for the kits. Computers it seemed were dual branded. The first DOS machine, the Z_151, was questionable, but the followup, the Z-158, is what I had as my first DOS computer. With various upgrades, it served me right up to the 386 era, and I never ever owned a 286. What kept them alive was deals with colleges and universities - we exclusively sold Heat/Zenith computers at my school, and we also had a repair shop that supported both the campus-owned equipment as well units purchased from the store. Every faculty and staff office had one, plus all the public sites were equipped with banks of them. It really was a rugged machine, heavy and solid chassis and everything was on cards - the backplane was just a passive XT bus, there was one card with the CPU and CGA, and another with memory. I think. Definitely 2 cards. Switchable 4.77MHz/8MHz operation and it was rock solid - as in you could blip the switch in the back like a Morse key and the thing would never hang or crash.I sort of lie - I DID BRIEFLY have a 286. I forget the name of it, but a company came out with a 286 upgrade board. It plugged in to an empty card slot and had a 40 pin ribbon cable with a header on it that you plugged in place of the 8088. It was horribly unreliable, mostly seeming like issues with the 40 pin flat unshielded ribbon cable. It improved slightly with some makeshift shielding added, but in the end I just returned it and went back to my stable 8088 (actually replaced with a NEC V20).They were very solid pieces. Since our campus network at the time was part of the phone system, with an RS232 port on th room's phone terminal, after every major electrical storm we usually had a dozen or so machine that blew the serial line drivers, we had tubes of them in stock in the shop. 99.9% of the time, swap the 1488 and 1489 and the machine was as good as new.Problem was, you paid for that build quality. About that time, the cheap clones started appearing - first Gateway, later Dell. Friend of mien had a Gateway, one day he had an issue and had to call their support line. He got put on hold, and then comes running for me to come to his room, I had to hear something. They had no actual hold on their phones, someone just put the receiver down on a desk. In the background you could hear the cows mooing - when they say they started in half a cattle barn on the farm of the one founder's parents, they were't joking. This is the difference - he paid a lot less for his Gateway machine, but it took a month of fiddling before it finally was reliable. My Z-158 cost more, but I used it nearly 7 years completely trouble-free. We know how the general consumer market went, though.

author: donotdespisethesnake
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2017, 04:59:56 pm
content: QuotePretty much all technology becomes a victim of newer technology. Nostalgia is for drunken evenings around the fire place, it is not much of a business model. I'd give this new Heathkit a year or two before they fold again.Their clock kit actually has some unique features I would like. Obviously I am not going to buy their overpriced kit, I will make my own! Or if I wanted cheaper, I'd pay $10 for radio-controlled clock from the supermarket.

author: N2IXK
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2017, 06:24:51 pm
content: Quote from: calexanian on April 03, 2017, 04:07:37 amI was wondering if anyone else would recognize that!Were they offering a Rettysnitch to go along with it? The link returns a 404 at the moment....I have built (and rebuilt/restored) many Heathkits over the years. Had a complete SB-102 station with pretty much all of the accessory units including the Nixie tube frequency readout, all purchased from flea markets and hamfests back before such things became "collectibles" rather than "boatanchors". If anyone wants a taste of the original Heathkit experience, it is possible to "re-kit" a poorly assembled unit (and lots of them fall into this category), and rebuild it as long as you have the original assembly manual and are careful working with old, often unobtanium components.

author: JoeN
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 05, 2017, 11:18:46 pm
content: Quote from: N2IXK on April 05, 2017, 06:24:51 pmIt will likely be back on April 1st next year.

author: djacobow
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2017, 12:08:06 am
content: I built a color TV from them in 1987. It was a present for my Bar Mitzvah! Assembly was fun and I learned about aligning the magnets of a crt. Thing had on screen display and stereo sound - pretty high end for the time.There were some teething pains. I remember one unkeyed wiring harness I put in backwards. Smoke was released.The manual was good, professionally written, good drawings, and with an extended theory of operation section.It worked perfectly well past the end of analog television broadcasting. My parents eventually tossed it for a flat screen.

author: MarkL
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: April 06, 2017, 04:13:39 pm
content: I would build anything from Heathkit I could get my hands on. I desperately wanted the H8 or an IMSAI 8080, but couldn't make either happen.Heathkits were educational not only for the circuit theory, but also for construction skills. And not to mention troubleshooting skills since they rarely worked right the first time, at least for me. But to be fair, it always turned out to be pilot error except for once when there was actually a bad component which died in a smokey blaze.Surviving from the 70's and early 80's I still have a GC-1092D Clock/Calendar, an IT-28 Capacitor Tester, a AA-1640 Audio Amplifier, and an IG-4244 Oscilloscope Calibrator.The clock has been running for 40+ years with the center digits now a little weak, the amplifier sees daily use as part of our TV/entertainment system, and the calibrator sits in the bench stack with Tek and HP gear (<1ns rise time - still pretty good!).The capacitor tester sees occasional use, but has been banished to the storage room. Being a "Magic Eye" and tube based unit, it's big and just doesn't have a good high-tech look compared to everything else, as a visitor once pointed out to me. There's also not much call for testing capacitors to 600V now-a-days. But it still works.Not surviving, of those I can remember, was a cassette deck, an AM/FM clock radio, and an AM tube radio (that was possibly a Knight Kit). There was a second Heathkit clock of the same model which I tossed when the power transformer died, and I'm kicking myself because I really could have used those (now rare) neon 7-segment displays to keep the other one running. Oh well.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2017, 04:49:56 pm
content: Quote from: MarkL on April 06, 2017, 04:13:39 pmHow can anyone not love a magic eye. Greatest invention of the tube era. A meter with darn near zero inertia.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 06, 2017, 06:40:24 pm
content: The unfortunate aspect of magic eye tubes is that they don't seem to last very long. I had a Zenith radio that had one and it was weak, good originals were impossible to find and even similar tubes were starting to dry up. They do look nifty though, I'm surprised nobody is making them in China by now, the tech is not all that complex.

author: N2IXK
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 07, 2017, 01:58:44 am
content: Ex-USSR surplus eye tubes are pretty widely available on eBay and other sites. Their type 6E5S is essentially the same as the US type 6E5, but with a much friendlier octal base instead of the 6 pin used on the 6E5. Octal sockets are much easier to find these days.

author: med6753
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2017, 05:52:45 am
content: Quote from: MarkL on April 06, 2017, 04:13:39 pmDitto...

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 09, 2017, 08:52:09 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on April 06, 2017, 06:40:24 pmI unfortunately (and now am having second thoughts, almost 2 years later) tossed an old kit stereo system my Dad built in the early 60's - I did find it in one of the old Lafayette catalogs I found online, forget the exact year, but we're talking 60-61, possibly late 50's. The tuner had the magic eye of the type where the formed into an exclamation point, this was on the actual moving dial indicator, so when you were accurately tuned to a station it showed as an exclamation. I last powered it up in the early 80's and it was still working. Something went wrong in the preamp which is why it all got put away and we bought a new stereo for the house. I'm reasonably sure I could have fixed it these days.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2017, 03:41:33 am
content: You probably could have got a reasonable chunk of cash for it even in non-working condition. A lot of that old kit stuff is sought after, especially anything audio related.

author: rdl
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2017, 04:18:18 am
content: Sometimes for entertainment I go to ebay and search for Heathkit, set it for "Time: ending soonest", and start scrolling. I always hope I'll find a deal, but so far have not found anything I wanted at a price I was willing to pay.

author: N2IXK
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2017, 02:42:26 pm
content: Quote from: rrinker on April 09, 2017, 08:52:09 pmSounds like an EICO HFT-90 monaural FM tuner. The indicator tube was a DM70 subminiature type, and was mounted as the moving pointer on a slide rule type dial. A very cool design feature. There are several on eBay at any given time, so they must have sold well back in the day.They work well, but you need the optional multiplex adapter kit to receive stereo FM broadcasts.

author: ralphrmartin
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 10, 2017, 03:13:09 pm
content: My dad was a really meticulous type when it came to making things. He worked for Heathkit, and part of his job was building some of the kits to act as demos of the completed item, for display in the local Heathkit shop in Birmingham (UK) city centre. Dunno if anyone on here remembers that shop.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 11, 2017, 07:32:01 pm
content: Quote from: N2IXK on April 10, 2017, 02:42:26 pmIndeed, that is exactly it. The preamp was also EICO. Not sure about the amp - there's a set on eBay with the tuner and amp but that doesn't look like that one, the amp we had did not have a full enclosure, the tubes and the transformers were all open air (shields on a couple of the tubes). The amp and preamp were stereo, in addition to the tuner there was a Girard turntable. I DO still have the record collection - lots of 78's and 45's and plenty of early stereo LP's. Stuff like Elvis's early albums (more country than rock n roll), all the big folk groups like Limeliters and Kingston Trio, etc.

author: oldway
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 11, 2017, 08:27:44 pm
content: QuoteGarrard turntable, I think.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 11, 2017, 08:40:03 pm
content: You are correct. Girard is a well known name around here, including a major street named after the family and it just comes out that way.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 11, 2017, 08:41:17 pm
content: The wood case was an optional accessory, my uncle has a slightly newer solid state Eico amp and FM tuner that he built in the late 60s or early 70s. I'd love to have had that stuff. Can't really get a tube amplifier in any condition for under $100 and good working ones often fetch a lot more.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 11, 2017, 08:47:00 pm
content: The preamp was an EICO HF-85, based on pictures. I can't find any matching pics of the turntable, definitely not one of the high end ones, cabinet that was in was probably also optional, but browsing pictures I didn;t see any that had the same looking controls and tone arm.Found the amp, it was the HF-87. At one time it did have the metal cover over the top, but no wood case for that one. In fact there was an odd looking bit of metal I found when cleaning out the house and I couldn't place it - now after seeing a picture it was the cover from the amp!

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 11, 2017, 08:53:26 pm
content: OMG, just shoot me now. I looked some of the equipment up on ebay. An HF-87, UNTESTED, not even powered up, sold for $560!I had no idea that something like that would be worth that kind of money. It was good, but not like audiophile super awesome great kind of stuff. Gah, and the HF-85 from the same estate sale went for $326, although that was tested and known working, mine didn't work. But mine didn't have a melted knob, either.

author: daveyk
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2017, 09:37:53 am
content: Quote from: amspire on April 02, 2017, 06:05:28 amI used to listen to radio Nederlands as a kid and the His and Her show. It was exciting to write them and hear my name and home town spoken from the other side of the globe! I have fond memories of their "Easter egg hunt", which was a geology quiz and writing down my answers and mailing them to holland. A week or so later hearing the results on the air. Wow, what a world before the internet in the 1970s. I miss it in a lot of ways.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 12, 2017, 03:47:25 pm
content: Vintage audio gear has been really hot on the collector market for at least the past decade or so. It doesn't have to be audiophile quality stuff, anything with tubes in it and even some of the solid state stuff from Heath, Eico, Dynaco and others has gotten really valuable.