Pluggers by Rick McKee for February 27, 2018

I’m not sure if I even remember my grandparents’ house ever had a radio such as that when I visited them.

Wow, that is an old memory. TV’s were that way too.

However, as a plugger, I find that I don’t spring out of bed in the morning the way that I used to. I have to wait for my tubes to warm up too.

I am impress that anyone would have a radio with tubes that still work.

I remember we got a new car and my cousins got in tto drive it around. One of them turned on the radio and it started playing immediately and almost scared my cousins to death. That was the first transistor radio in a car that they had ever seen. We were so used to having to let a radio warm up that it would scare anyone the first time they heard it.

That radio is one of the new-fangled compact models. My grandparents had a radio that was a substantial piece of furniture.

Yup. Nowadays you don’t really turn them off so much as put them on “standby”, a lower power setting with just enough juice to keep the circuits warm. It’s not “instant on” because it was never really “off.”

Some hi fi types believe tubes are better and still use them. http://kenrockwell.com/audio/why-tubes-sound-better.htm

All I did was play!!!

My Halicrafters radio has tubes

I remember going with my Mom to the grocery store. They had a roller stand display by the front that you could test your tubes on, and the cabinet underneath had all kinds of new fuses to buy if you found it was bad.

Today we want instant gratification.

Real radios glow in the dark.

Most of the old tube radios now need a boatload of capacitors replaced because they have deteriorated over the years.