Well, not exactly, but...

I’m a bit on the “vintage” side, and the first electronics I got to hack on when I was a kid included a lot of “hollow state” (tube) gear. It was the stuff that was 20 or 30 years old at the time, and a lot was available, free.

One of the common items was car radios and various bits that belonged to them. Car electrical systems were 6 or 12V and vacuum tubes needed much higher voltage. A fixed, battery powered station could use a “motor generator” arrangement to produce high voltage AC from the battery supply. It’s pretty much what it sounds like.

The size, weight, and complexity of this arrangement was a poor choice for mobile use, so the “vibrator supply” was born. A reed relay operating at audio frequencies provided the swithing, a transformer providing the step up, and there you had it. Small, cheap, easily serviced... and noisy (both sound and radio) and inefficient but it worked!

I wonder if anyone else remembers a pervasive technology that was so completely overtaken by events it’s been forgotten. Anyone?

 

My first car was a 1962 Pontiac, it was transistor at that time. But I recall dad's 57 Ford was tube.
My recollection was these were called 'chopper' supplies. But the Wiki article uses 'vibrator'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrator_(electronic)#/media/File:HV_Vib.jpg

 

My first car was a 1962 Pontiac, it was transistor at that time. But I recall dad's 57 Ford was tube.
My recollection was these were called 'chopper' supplies. But the Wiki article uses 'vibrator'.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrator_(electronic)#/media/File:HV_Vib.jpg

There are also choppers.

Those early radios used one transistor class A audio amps, very hot—but it kept the parts count down and power transistors were pricey! Still remember the Motorola "bat wings" on the can mounted to the back of those radios.

 

Growing up 50s I remember all those radios very well. Soon as you turned it on you heard the vibrator hum and took a short time for the tubes to warm up. Last family car which had one was the 56 Pontiac the next car was a 63 Pontiac which had a transistor radio. I remember the vibrator driving a transformer to get the high voltage which was rectified and became the B+ plate supply for the tubes. Those older radios were well made and had some size and weight to them.

Thinking about it there is an old AM car radio in the basement but I am pretty sure it is a later transistor version.

Ron

 

My father had one of those vibrator-supply radios in his '49 Chevvy. A Motorola, I think. The buzzing was pretty loud, as I recall.

Dad had the Motorola permanently set on WQXR in NYC, which was AM (1560 kilocycles) station broadcasting classical music. Verdi, Wagner, Beethoven and all that. Good stuff, despite the buzz.

 

Dad had the Motorola permanently set on WQXR in NYC, which was AM (1560 kilocycles) station broadcasting classical music. Verdi, Wagner, Beethoven and all that. Good stuff, despite the buzz.

WQXR is still around! WNYC bought got the station in 2009, but the New York Times bought it from the original owners. It was an early FM station, too—1939. Which makes sense because of the music content (yay, Armstrong!). They are still an all classical format.

I remember WQXR very well, tuned in on my father's homebuilt Dynaco FM tuner, real hifi stuff!

 

My father had one of those vibrator-supply radios in his '49 Chevvy. A Motorola, I think. The buzzing was pretty loud, as I recall.

Dad had the Motorola permanently set on WQXR in NYC, which was AM (1560 kilocycles) station broadcasting classical music. Verdi, Wagner, Beethoven and all that. Good stuff, despite the buzz.

Such fond memories of battling with my father during those Sunday trips to Brooklyn to the grandparents for dinner. WMCA 570, WABC 770 and WINS 1010 and I set a radio button for each. Dad would get mad when he would hit a button I had changed. Since these grandparents were dad's in-laws he was not thrilled to be driving into the city on his Sunday.

Today, here in Cleveland, Ohio at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame they play old recordings of the stations I mentioned. Also, memories of summer days on Jones Beach and a thousand six transistor radios all tuned to those stations.

Ron

 

My first few cars in the 60ies had AM-FM radios. I never listened to the awful muffled AM radios but the FM sounded pretty good.

 

Such fond memories of battling with my father during those Sunday trips to Brooklyn to the grandparents for dinner. WMCA 570, WABC 770 and WINS 1010

Ah, yes. "Seventy-seven, W-A-B-C!!!" and the Top Forty. No battles with Dad; I saved my paper route money in my early teens and got myself my very own "transistor."

 

Ah, yes. "Seventy-seven, W-A-B-C!!!" and the Top Forty. No battles with Dad; I saved my paper route money in my early teens and got myself my very own "transistor."

Being somewhat... unusual, my memories are of talk radio. Real talk radio—WOR with Bob and Ray in the afternoon and Jean Shepherd at night. It is really wonderful that the Internet Archive has original episodes of those and many more shows.

 

Way back when, I had a '56 Chevy with a vibrator powered radio.
I saw a design in an electronics magazine on how to replace the vibrator with a multivibrator using two power-transistors, so I put one together with some spare parts I had, mounting the transistors on a small, rectangular piece of thin copper for a heatsink.
I stuffed it into the tubular case of an old vibrator after the guts were removed.
I plugged it in and turned the radio on. After a few suspenseful seconds that seemed much longer, the sound came on. Success.
No more mechanical noise, although as I recall, I could hear a faint whine from the switching frequency in the speaker.
It likely was switching at a much higher frequency than the mechanical vibrator.

 

The Vibrator oscillated at about 200 Hz. A little adapter for a tibe tester had two lights. if they glowed about the same it was good. In general, the primary was a grounded center tap transformer and +12 was switched to either side.

I built a solid state replacement, although very large using a 555 timer, two power transistors (2n3055) and a small signal transistor.

You can buy solid state versions in the same form factor.

My father mounted 1/2 of a tube radio in the trunk of a car.

I had a 3 band (AM/FM/SW) valve Blaupunkt radio that I put in a 1972 vehicle that was layed out in wavelengh instead of frequency,

 

Hello,

Halfway the following page there is a solid state vibrator replacement schematic as @crutschow mentioned:
https://www.qsl.net/g4bxd/wanted.htm

Bertus

 

My first few cars in the 60ies had AM-FM radios. I never listened to the awful muffled AM radios but the FM sounded pretty good.

So you were one of those rich kids? Yeah, well using AM you knew when a thunder storm was miles away, so there!
This is an interesting read, brief but interesting, about the history of the car radio. My bike, which I enjoy when it isn't sub zero temperatures , is a '92 and like me retro. The factory sound system includes an AM/FM stereo along with the cassette tape deck. Darn, I never should have thrown away all those cassette tapes. The evolution of the car radio is interesting. We loved our entertainment and when we could take it with us, that was really cool. Today we have satellite radio in our beloved cars and motorcycles.

Ron

 

using AM you knew when a thunder storm was miles away

SPIKED A HUGE MEMORY! 1975, Big Bear mountain, summertime thunderstorms were common. We, I was 17, were digging a trench at a church camp. The trench was for water, sewage and electrical. We kept the CB radio on so the main office could contact us should they want something. Those afternoons were spent listening for the hiss of the lightning, then counting the seconds till the crash of thunder. We knew how far away the lightning was.

Out of nowhere, Joey says "If your hair stands on end get on the ground - you're about to be hit by lightning." Seems like less than a minute went by - probably longer - our hairs started to stand up. Everybody was jumping into the trench yelling "GET DOWN! GET DOWN!" As I jumped into the pit I CAN SWEAR lightning exited one wall of the trench and went into the other side just feet away from my face. I'd say three feet. Lightning struck a Jeffery Pine just 30 feet away from where we were working. What I saw - or what I BELIEVE I saw - left an indelible impression in my memory. In all likelihood what I saw was something out of my peripheral vision that I perceived as lightning crossing the pit just feet away. But I still remember the feeling of the hairs on my body standing up.

On subject - vibrator tubes - I remember them. Think I've seen ONE in all my lifetime. I was fascinated by them. Never played with one though. I think I was just at the end of the technology.

 

What I saw - or what I BELIEVE I saw - left an indelible impression in my memory. In all likelihood what I saw was something out of my peripheral vision that I perceived as lightning crossing the pit just feet away.

Leaves a lasting impression.

Grumman C1 Trader out of Naples, Italy going to USS Eisenhower. We got caught in a storm which was scary enough. You could feel the electricity in the air when a little ball of what looked plasma sort of went down the aisle. St. Elmo's fire was alive and well. Scared the heck out of me and I thought this is it, we're going to die.

Yeah, vibrators were really cool mechanical electrical devices. They worked well for their intended purpose. At that time I marveled at such things. They seldom failed and were really durable.

Ron

 

Joey says "If your hair stands on end get on the ground - you're about to be hit by lightning.

Something like this:
There was a lightning strike after this photo was taken that killed one person, but these two survived.
Sean was knocked unconscious and suffered third-degree burns to his back and elbows.
Obviously there were unaware of the danger.

 

@crutschow: Yikes! Potential last moments photo.

@Reloadron: Never seen St. Elmo's fire, but I've heard of a number of eye witness accounts.

 

I recall using an old ARC5 receiver with a dynamotor for the HV supply. I rewired the heaters for 12 volts instead of 24, and it worked fairly well. And it looked way cool back then. Vibrator supplies were always an interesting challenge when they stopped working, and they were not really good for much power. But someplace in my archives is an ELMAC CB radio with a vibrator supply. Lots of tubes, and it would keep the car warm in the winter.
The funny setup is using a small computer 24 volt switch-mode power supply to power another old ARC5 receiver that came with a 12 volt dynamotor. What a mix of very old and quite new.