Nixies Tubes & Punched Cards (in FM stereo)
The Scott T-33S might be the most ‘Techmoan’ Hi-Fi radio tuner ever.
I’ve been waiting to share this one with you since 2020, here’s the video.
https://youtu.be/PS_ZJZ1jT84
I’ve nothing notable to add this time, so once I’ve got everything tidied away, I’ll start on the next video.
Take care.
Comments (57)
I wondered how warm the cards get once they've been sat in the slot for a while. If plastic coated cards do get tacky could that be an issue and gum up the aperture? My local garage has some tactile business cards which for want of a better description are plastic coated and sort of a playing card thickness.
I’m pretty confident there’s no heat in that area of the case. It’s just a slot with some pin connectors.
I like the SAE better. I did just purchase a SCOTT Stereomaster 433 though. Once again, you are bad for my wallet.
Was that the one on ebay that was stuck on one frequency?
I saved this video to watch while on holiday ☺️ - I'm sipping coffee on a beachfront balcony in Hilton Head SC. I love your videos - a nice dose of hifi history in this one, as well your trademark unusual tech and captivating humour. The punched card reader is superb (if rather impractical)!
I usually download a few YouTube videos to watch when I’m away too,
Wonderful stuff. “Fortunately each of the components has an understudy waiting in the wings”. Just one? Would a more appropriate analogy be: each component has a royal balcony worth of stooges who reside with anonymity in a palatial storage locker, and live in hope to be one day unboxed to the world?
What are the TR7, TR8 and TR9 connectors for?
I don’t believe they’re any kind of connector, I think they’re just components. I’d have to look in the service manual.
Camera looked great to my uneducated and middle aged eyes.
I feel like Scott with this design just wanted to be different…..
Fantastic video for an iconic tuner. I was taught programming on 80 column cards as well - around the same time that this device was made. I would be interested to see what the scope output looked like. Is it just a tuning aid or graphic displays like the other one?
It’s just a tuning guide. The manual even goes as far as to say that it’s not really required and is only useful when trying to tune in really weak signals. I think it would only come in handy for people in an area where the FM band is crammed and they were trying to rotate their antenna to eliminate crosstalk.
The punch card thing is a bit clunky I bet but... if this was not such a rare and expensive thing and IF somehow the punch card thing would have become slighly common for a moment, I could see a world where they would be used to advertise stations. Like a business card type thing. You hand out a punchcard and then at home they can just insert it into their radio to listen to the station. But, the scanning feature made that basically redundant at the same moment.
It's reminding me of the old paper library tickets you used to get inside the books, often never discarded when libraries moved over to barcodes.
am i seeing things or do i see new monitor audio speakers and a new amp of some sort? hope that means another hifi update vid🤞🤞
I’ve been shooting some things for the next Patreon update.
Remind of some device Mend it Mark would have of one of his shelves 😁👍🏻
Great video - just using the phrase "memory card reader" on the front makes it 30 years ahead of its time.
I can imagine someone looking at it and thinking "is that for Smartmedia cards".
This video is why we can't end FM. There are so many lovely tuners in Matt's house
As a prop for a 1968 TV show set in the unimaginable far future of 1983, this is almost perfect. I'm surprised and disappointed that it doesn't play a loop of synthetic "beedle-beep-beep-biddle-boop" noises and flash a bank of superfluous lights while "processing" the card.
It could do also do with a metallic voice saying 'analysing' whenever a card is inserted.
On your card print-out PDF, it might be worth putting the actual card dimensions so people could double check their printer is printing them out correctly since America don't use A4 printers
I would never have thought of that.
I agree that this is the perfect product for the channel! 😃 Looks to me very well-built, hence also the price-tag, but the punch cards look more like a gimmick that is not so useful in practice... And not so user-friendly... But as you said: it was pioneering technology!
They should have put a core memory into the tuner. There were a couple of prosumer products (desktop calculators) that used them. Of course what would have been more likely would have been an SRAM with a Varta backup battery which after a decade or two would leak and eat away the PCBs. I have a 1980s Philips CRT TV which uses / used one of those to store the channels.
Do you live on a hill, Mat? If those frequencies were correct it looks like you were picking up Radio 2 from Winter Hill, Radio 3 from Holme Moss and Radio 4 from Keighley! A neat way to check if your BBC services are from the same transmitter is to look at the spacing - (almost) all major transmitters have the three original services (R2-3-4) spaced 2.2MHz apart with Radio 1 (added in the 80s) 5.2MHz above that.
It’s really the side of a valley, but the radio reception is a bit odd, one of the stronger stations is BBC Wales or whatever it’s called.
Hi Matt. I have a Sony ICF-SW1 here which I’d be happy to send over to you if you think it would make for an interesting video. It’s in need of a little bit of repair. It powers on but all I get from it is static. Let me know. Love the videos.
I do have one with all the bits in its carrying case, I intent to cover SW radios at some point. The only thing that’s out me off is that I know nothing about them and SW enthusiasts know too much about them. Me making a video would be like dressing up as Darth Vader at a Dr Who convention and going around saying “live long and prosper, I’m from the planet Krypton”.
Pedantic radio nerd here - the US 200kHz spacing based on odd decimals (87.9-88.1-88.3-etc) is because the US considers FM broadcasting to be channelised - there are 100 channels from 87.9-107.9 which are officially designated as "channels 200-300". The rest of the world has never adopted this model, so any frequency that's a multiple of 100kHz within the FM broadcast band is fine.
Love it, Mat! Programming with punched cards takes me back.
That is one cool, historical tuner! There can't be terribly many folks who have one in daily use. The use of punch cards is odd, but it seems that it's more of a novelty item intended to enhance the "Gee Whiz" factor of their new device rather than something that makes it easier to use. The look captured by the new camera bothered me. The images appeared less sharp and the colors were a bit too saturated, making the various tschotchkes, gew-gaws, knick-knacks and bric-a-brac🙂on the shelf behind you appear overly vibrant and a little harsh. I thought that this might have been due to viewing it on the Patreon app, so I checked it out on YouTube and found no improvement. After you mentioned the new camera with it's shorter depth of field, that seems likely to account for the sharpness issues, but not the over-saturated colors. The effect isn't terribly annoying, but it just didn't look like what I've been used to seeing in your videos. It would be interesting to see how well it captures street scenes or your famous holiday videos--it seems to be the ideal camera for those situations.
I used a vibrant mode, it’s perhaps a bit too much.
Wow, what a unicorn. Fantastic video! I've had good results coating paper/card with a slightly diluted mix of white glue (PVA, Elmer's -- not sure what you call it it in the UK). Just coat both sides to keep it even/flat and it gets pretty firm without adding thickness. Or if you wanted to spend more money you could use Modge Podge. Thanks for the video.
I had bought some Modge Podge for the job but haven’t had the chance to try it yet. With a recommended 12 hour setting time I didn’t want to hold the video up for it.
I *immediately* thought of the SBE Opti-Scan, a contemporary "police scanner" that used the same punch-card idea. The main difference being that it was set up to receive VHF and UHF public safety bands (there was apparently a EU/UK version as well). The other difference was that each card held 10 channels because, you know, *scanner*. Given that the alternative in other scanners was to buy physical crystals for each channel you cared to listen to, the Opti-Scan was a revelation ... one that was not repeated. With a few years, programmable scanners appeared and they took over.
Didn't know there was an EU/UK version 'til I found this: https://www.rigpix.com/miscrx/sbe_optiscan.htm
ooh that's lovely! With the punched card, would wrapping it in a wide piece of packing tape or clear contact adhesive help with structural integrity, or would it just make the card too thick to put into the slot? There would have to be a card stock/plastic coating combo that hits the sweet spot between usability and durability.
Perhaps, I’ve got some more experimenting to do.
Perhaps if you printed to an adhesive sticker paper and then bonded that to a heavy card stock or maybe thin sheets of plastic
It’s definitely an idea.
Absolutely fascinating device - and yes, it's gorgeous and so ahead of it's time visually. I'm guessing you have someone that you go to for repairs of your other tuner? I have no idea where I'd go to get something like that fixed. Regardless - excellent video!
Unfortunately I don’t have a repair person, so I’ll see how I get on with it, I’ve got one thing I want to try but if that doesn’t work then I’ll likely just have to run it without the scope.
I love the clunkiness of the up and down buttons, they have so much travel in them. Really feels like something from the space program than a hifi. You mentioned you had a plan to make the cards more durable, did it work out? I wondered if spraying the punch arse with varnish or paint (especially something that will soak into the card then dry) might reinforce them.
I only recorded that yesterday and edited it all day today. Further experimentation has to wait for the moment, but I bought some stuff to try when I get the chance.
Great episode, Mat - thanks.
Back in the days when way more complicated than it needs to be, meant a very curious genius idea, not like today, loved that. By the way, I thought the end shot looked better, you could see everything on the shelves behind better, whilst you and them were in focus, items all looks a bit blured out usualy, just my opinion though.
I think it might work, I just need to nail down the focus a bit better.
• I was just thinking that a new Techmoan video would be quite ideal today. • This device looks fantastic and it most certainly belongs in your collection. • It's fascinating to me that something we take advantage of today was once a hurdle for tech companies. This beauty would have certainly made a statement compared with other receivers of the time. • I am imagining young people creating a game with these punch cards - a quite expensive toy. • 28:54 The background lighting in your closing scene looks great - it looks different than normal. I think it's an extra purple glow. • I sometimes imagine the immensity of your storage unit: https://postimg.cc/N2fCLPhn Lovely video - Nixies look flippin' awesome and they make me wish we still used them today in displays. But you didn't catch the Solid Sheds advertisement this time. 😁 Take care 🤍
Imagine the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it's Mat hammering another nixie tube device into a packing crate.
Good video Mat. Regards
i noticed a miss in the focus at quite some time/very soap opera look. not shure about it
I noticed it in the end segment.
I made a mental note to offer my basic CAD services too make up a card template for you. Clearly you are more than capable of doing it yourself. It'sd really interesting and if I were buying an FM tuner 50+ years ago i'd have definitely lusted after one just for the punch card tech. Though with my sensible hat on i'd wonder about exactly how many radio stations i'd regulalry be tuning into. My current FM tuner is set to Radio 4 and only because I have a friend that listens to it when they visit, I don't use the radio myself. Regarding the depth of field the end shot makes you look like you're in front of a green screen.
Is it the new camera that makes the final scene look like a green screen or the previous one?