Why aren't folks using better US made vintage germanium diodes?
- Thread starter hifitown
- Start date
Understood, and fair enough.
Inconsistent would be bad for a mass produced item.
I deal with vintage parts and (generally that is indeed often true, but there are many exceptions)
Examples: Original US made tube and transistor sockers made of phenolic, are way better and hold up to more insertions. Vintage tubes routinely test more consistent (even used sometimes) and better mU because they had more time and money to use coatings and more flashing. ( Back then tubes were actually important, for use in TV's where drifting was an issue). If you go old enough. you can find natural latex wire, which does not get stiff or eat the copper (no PVC chemicals). Vintage speakers, used alnico magnets..which are more powerful (sometimes) and have better Q characteristics translating to more detailed reproduction. Old transformers, used more mu metal, nickel permalloy coils and softer copper wire -- these tend to sometimes sound better, and they lasted 80 years, ready for 80 more. Etc, etc.
((Most of this stuff only matters to hobbyists.)))
I would be surprised if the cheap Germanium diodes have a consistent leakage or FVD (let me know if this is true / not true as I don't work with those)
Now for the jokes:
"We’re not really interested in ugly, crusty, old shit around here."
OK. In that case please send me any super old Les Paul's with Ciggy burns.
And if you run across a Martin N-20 with a big hole, named "Trigger" .. please send it to me.
I'll pay shipping.
Bleep Bleep Bleep!not gonna lie, if you really wanted to send me a couple low leakage examples - ill happily chuck a pair in my klon build, do an A/B comparison playthrough, and see what we get...
(wont be cheap though, USPS are cunts)
all my builds are ugly as fuck, so i honestly don't give a shit what these diodes look like. if they sound cool, wicked
owlexifry
Well-known member
come on mate, this isn't TGP
Are you overseas? That may be a bit pricey on postage, but I can check.not gonna lie, if you really wanted to send me a couple low leakage examples - ill happily chuck a pair in my klon build, do an A/B comparison playthrough, and see what we get...
(wont be cheap though, USPS are cunts)
all my builds are ugly as fuck, so i honestly don't give a shit what these diodes look like. if they sound cool, wicked
Low leakage... well.. my Sencore Super Cricket is on the Fritz... for leakage checking...how do you guys test on the bench? Any good ideas?
I don't care how your build looks. Messy is fine.
Just hearing these in action would be cool.
Let me know your general location and I'll see if I can afford shipping.
owlexifry
Well-known member
i wouldn't expect you to actually send them all the way to australia, but if you really want to hear them...
im sure there's someone closer that has a klon build you could have them put in.
Big Monk
Well-known member
I think this is a fair price! Contact the seller for 100 & they can probably negotiate a better price, that's what I do!
1N34A Germanium Gold Bonded Diodes ITT, BKC, MICROSEMI Crystal Radio (25pcs) USA | eBay
ITT /BKC, Now Microsemi GERMANIUM DIODES. Mfr:ITT / BKC, Now Microsemi. House Marked color coded bands /Black/Brown /Red / Printed ITT logo on glass DO-7. Vf is in the. 28-.30 range.www.ebay.com
I don’t need germanium diodes for anything I build.
Hey, I am tempted.. really am. I get a pretty good deal on postage.. I will check. Someone else also offered, but might not be a Klon. Would you feel like posting a video (unlisted youtube is fine) so I can hear? Other than it's really just opinion that matters : )i wouldn't expect you to actually send them all the way to australia, but if you really want to hear them...
im sure there's someone closer that has a klon build you could have them put in.
I see that... was looking at your page. Try some OC's if you are after British sound. OC (NewMarket and Mullard IIRC) transistors in vintage Neve channels, were critical to the sound of early Beatles and Stones. A Germanium Neve 1073 was the best srounding EQ & preamp I think I ever heard... no wonder they are expensive. Very tube like, but also edgy. Noisy when bad... yeah, sure, but not all go bad.
PedalBuilder
Well-known member
This is a big leap of logic. For the most part, germanium diodes in pedals are used either as (1) hard clipping diodes wired from signal to ground, or (2) to bias a leaky germanium transistor. These Western Electric diodes were not designed with the intention of creating hard clipping in a distortion pedal, so why should they sound "better" in that use case than any other diodes? And for that matter, what does "better" even mean? In the second use case, biasing a leaky germanium transistor, what matters is how leaky the diode is relative to the transistor. So again, why should the Western Electric one sound "better" in this context? You yourself said that you don't know how leaky they are, so you don't have any basis for saying that the Western Electric diodes are better at this than any other particular diodes.
This is completely incorrect. Even if it was correct, it's irrelevant. Western Electric was not a state-owned enterprise. It was a highly profitable subsidiary of AT&T, one of the most profitable companies of the 20th century. (For non-US readers, it's worth noting that AT&T had a monopoly on telephone service in much of the US for most of the 20th century.) Western Electric absolutely had a profit motive, and it made vast profits. That's irrelevant, of course. Essentially every supplier that we use for building pedals has/had a profit motive, with the exception of some NOS germanium components made by state-owned enterprises in communist countries. Having a profit motive does not correlate with inferior product quality. If it did, then it would follow that the NOS Soviet germanium diodes are superior to the Western Electric germanium diodes because they were made by an entity that did not have a profit motive, whereas Western Electric did have a profit motive.
Not sure that this is the route I'd take here. The audiophile scene is all too well-known for having a significant number of people with too much money, not enough sense, and a deep appreciation for snake oil. The sort of people who claim to be able to hear the difference between a power cable with "natural rubber" insulation and one with synthetic insulation but can't tell the difference between a 320kbps MP3 and a vinyl record in a blind A/B test. Just because audiophiles will spend "crazy bucks" on some NOS components doesn't mean that a different NOS component from the same manufacturer will sound any "better" in a pedal than a more robust and modern version.
You're really missing the point on this. You can get a D9 or D18 germanium diode for about 15 cents. You have not provided any reason why people should pay 30x more for a component that does the same thing. The relevant price comparison here isn't a sandwich, it's another germanium diode.
What kind of circuit did you build? And how did you compare its performance to the same circuit using an ordinary, non-magic germanium diode?
You seem to really dislike "crapola glass-seal" germanium diodes for some reason. We've been using those in pedals since the 60s, and I'm not aware of any issues with them failing due to their "crapola glass-seal." I've used dozens of them in pedals, and had no issues them failing or breaking during assembly or use.
Then how do you know that they "perform easily as good as a crapola glass-seal IN type diode"? You don't seem to understand how or why germanium diodes are used in a pedal, but you seem comfortable declaring that your magic diodes "perform easily as good as a crapola glass-seal [diode]." There's a disconnect there.
Yes, NOS Sylvania and Soviet diodes are cheap. So what? So are 1/4 watt 1% metal film resistors. So are 1N4148s. So are many other components that we use. They're cheap and do the job without any problems. You seem to think that's a problem for some reason. The onus is on you to explain why people should stop using the cheap, functional component that they've used for decades and switch to your special magic component that costs 30x more than the one they're using today.
I'm sure that you can find outliers, but it's really easy to find them for 15-30¢ per diode.
Again, you are the one who needs to explain why your expensive component is superior. You haven't come close to doing that. And your posts sound like a snake oil salesman, which doesn't help.
Really? Because that's 100% how you're coming across.
Like I said, stuff like this makes you sound like an asshole. Telling people "if you like stuff that's cheaper than my magic diodes, then you don't care about anything other than the decoration on your packaging" is not going to win you any friends. It's also some of the worst logical reasoning that I've ever heard. "If a 34¢ component works perfectly, therefore the paint on the pedal enclosure is the only thing that matters." Utterly bizarre.
Not sure what you're talking about here. "Fuzz happened" when small, low margin businesses bought the cheapest components available and used them to build slight variations on circuits that they found in then-contemporary electronics textbooks. Arbiter didn't use NKT275s in Fuzz Faces because they were the best that money could buy. They used them because they were cheap and widely available. There's a reason that there are something like a dozen variations for each Tone Bender or Big Muff—the manufacturers kept changing components based on what was cheap and available. The same is true for every other pioneering fuzz pedal manufacturer. They were shrewd small businessmen, not a bunch of cork-sniffing hi fi connoisseurs counting angels on pinheads and angsting about which wire insulation sounded best.
Your comments reveal a profound lack of understanding of how and why guitar pedals use germanium diodes. This would be fine, if you weren't also aggressively telling people who do understand that they're ignorant cheapskates. You keep making vague, puffery-ridden claims about something that you want to sell, and then rudely insult anyone who expresses the slightest skepticism. That sort of snake oil salesman behavior is off-putting and is the reason why you're getting a cold welcome.
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PedalBuilder
Well-known member
What's All This Stuff About Germanium Diode Leakage?
Like Germanium transistors, Germanium diodes are leaky. They behave like they have a resistor in parallel and in many cases, that resistor is less than 50K. The higher the leakage, the lower the resistance. Two questions that keep popping up are: How much leakage is too much? How do we...
forum.pedalpcb.com
Big Monk
Well-known member
I don’t need germanium transistors for anything I build.
Passinwind
Well-known member
I'd be down to try a couple in an upcoming Kliche build and already have the PPCB board and most of the components sitting here, but I don't even own a guitar amp at the moment and I'm much more interested in doing my own take on acoustic guitar widgets right now anyway. I do use NOS tubes in certain situations where I've satisfied myself that it's genuinely worthwhile, but none of those situations involve noise toys and old school sand doesn't hold any inherent cachet in what passes for my world.
owlexifry
Well-known member
yep, no issues with posting a clip to youtube (very basic though - SM57+2i2+iphone)
Bricksnbeatles
Member known well
All this talk of ~35¢ 1N34a diodes… where’s anyone finding those? I’ve been looking for some low leakage glass germs for ages. Everything I’ve seen in the past year has been Chinese counterfeits or seemingly delusional in the pricing, but I don’t check super often.
Hmm, well. I did not mean to offend anyone.
I did get defensive on the point of me trying to make money on here somehow, apologies.
I apologize to everyone if I came off like an asshole. I am actually just excited to see someone do a build with these..and what I see out there is sorta boring. I really do not mean you suck or anyone else. Snd don't mean this in a denigrating way.
I mean.. if you work magic with cheap parts... it's still made of cheap parts. If you use expensive diodes, you can then say your units have those... Nevermind these.. I'll settle for someone just using branded ones.. (I am sure someone does)
That's OK to make great spamburgers, but it is a factor in final intrinsic value... (paper money vs gold argument).
But, unless you know these expensive diodes are worse. Otherwise... I don't get the vitriol about the potential of $5 diodes..
If you can sell a pedal for $200, and you can spend $15 more on even a better brand of non-Generic diodes... that might be worthwhile experiment for someone, especially if you like them, and you can market that. .
I don't see the difference in paying for my next sandwich and another diode.. sorry... 0.30 is just cheap... so is $5x3. Even if it's just an image thing.
The construction of these WE's is vastly different. despite similar electrical applications.... even you have to agree on that (?) I am suggesting that this sort of diode could make a pedal.. possibly sound better... maybe look better (at least I think so)... and at very, very least.. be much different than anyone else. Being different is a key factor, in many cool products. I am always bummed to see the cool paint job and all the same parts under the hood.
You are saying I am a layman... so I will make another laymen's observation: All of the pedals I see on the market are using the same unbranded, mysterious glass diodes... which looks great for consistency, and really boring too, in fact, it's the lowest common denominator -- that's the only point I was trying to make. I like to see inside, as well as outside.. many of us audio geeks do.
.
I was after either interest... or proof of concept on freebies. Unless you have tried these. You just don't know. You are saying basically, diodes are switches.. so you just want cheap switches; OK. But, I say, if it's in the signal path, it likely does matter on some level. Furthermore, I see different behavior on the scope.. so it will matter some (for clipping at least). We just don't know how it will sound.
Logical, right?
I seem to have offended some folks here as I don't build pedals to sell. No, I don't. But I work with cool parts that are used for pedals and could be saved from the landfill. And I sell to boutique amp builders and studios, and hobbyists everywhere.. as well as builders of other devices who need high quality stuff, no longer made -- I hear stuff, I see stuff... and I see really unexpected things that actually matter.
When people asked if I was selling, I said no.. as to not contaminate research with sales.
I offered samples for people to try, if they wanted to report back. How is that puffery, or mean / insulting?
Raw materials, workmanship, and basic economics gives me prejudice..yes.
But... I'm sorry. Actually have nothing horrible to say about the glass seal diodes.. except that everyone calls them NOS from suspect sources. And, no one wants to try something different. What about the old pedals?... I've attached a photo of the original glass seal IN34, which honestly looks, not much like the 0.30 units -- sure maybe it's worse.. but it looks better.
(Actually writing this, I just noticed, the original IN34 is point contact.. are you using "point contact" IN34's and were they ever using in the classic pedals? )
The source of so-called NOS diodes I find often suspect on eBay. But I'm sure you guys knew where to get the good ones.
Everyone says they're the same (I doubt it, they don't even measure all that consistent, really, not the ones I've tried) -- and the worst is that plenty filter in from China and Russia and are sold as something great, or at least I thought.
I would argue that you are defending the $.30 diode just as hard as I was unintentionally denigrating it (sorry) .
I'm not all talk and puffery . I'm interested in getting to the heart of the matter, actually..
And I can tell you from my past 35 years of experience is people don't pay a lot for stuff for zero reason, not most of the time.
Snake oil is surprisingly somewhat rare..
Sure, it's out there, but snake oil usually doesn't come in a dirty, filthy box of hand-clipped diodes like I have.
Please refer to the blow apart diagram of the WE 400 and compare to a blow apart diagram of the mystery glass seal.
I tried to share the specs here from my library. I don't see how that is puffery.
Yes...
My test involved looking at the Hard-clipping behavior , which I thought was the most important application of a diode in a pedal that would affect tone .... (am I wrong?) . How do you think this matters?
I will study and read up on the use of Germanium diodes for leakage. I have not been looking at that.
My experiment compared one of these to another germanium diode and observed via oscilloscope that they did in fact have a nicer, softer shoulder (which is documented all over the place). The clipping action compared to the other germanium IN34 diode I checked looked allot different.. maybe thats good maybe that's bad -- I was really up front about that (again puffery?)
This might have been because of the higher Forward Voltage, that would make sense, and I assume that leads into the adice of checking IV curve.
So far, no one has quoted or speculated on the spec sheet in my photo versus an IN34.
The breakdown voltage, leakage specs and forward voltage specifications are also somewhat superior (or different) to the IN34 if you check out the spec sheet in my photo, . Not saying this is going to matter, but it's there and is just another facet of why these did cost more (probably $3ish back in early 60s).
The practice of biasing a leaky resistor with a diode I did not try. Is this something that came about after the original applications of germanium diodes in vintage pedals?
I do primarily deal with audiophile markets, but you really have to realize that they are careful listeners. And you're coming from a field in which people are literally listening to noise and then making totally subjective decisions about what they like or don't like,. I'm not criticizing that. I totally get it. But I don't think it's anything superior to what audiophiles do.. I also think there is a bridge and commonality to the two practices.
There are cheapskate audiophiles too. I recommend cheap items all the time. But cheap to us is under $50 (?)
One area that I promise you you are a bit wrong about is the Western Electric's profit motive. While you are right, they made tons of money on the telephone business and maybe some selling to the military ---You're slightly confusing the two companies. Western Electric was the manufacturing arm of AT&T, and they sold specialty audio devices to the government by this time... and also used it themselves for audio transmission. They cared deeply about reliability.. and their mfr standards and tolerances, were generally higher than the average modern Chinese factory. I have attached a price list of some other diodes they sold. This is not the $100 hammer argument. These diodes were probably gold plated for aerospace, at least some of them. what I am saying that really cared about raw materials.
Most of these cost $3 in the early 60s. Inflation adjusted that is $30 in today's money. while that's not an outrageous sum, it sure as heck pays for a (potentially) superior diode. High prices, yes.. but they did not sell these at radio shack. It was for national defense and it was a government granted monopoly, basically as you said.. for electronic parts as well.
If you take a look at my picture, you will see that it says right at the top of the book, not sold to general public. They only sold to the government and institutions by the 1960s... you could not purchase a Germanium transistor or part over the counter..that's not only low profit motive... that isn't even capitalism.
I have also attached a price list.. unfortunately, I have not located on for the 400F.. but look at the prices.. this was 1963.
Before that, Bell Labs invented most of what we now use in audio, including pioneering in the cinema and early high-fidelity audio business.
I never called anyone an ignorant cheapskate. Your words not mine.
And did I insult someone who want to buy some?
Most do not, and I did not want to break rules.
""Like I said, stuff like this makes you sound like an asshole. Telling people "if you like stuff that's cheaper than my magic diodes, then you don't care about anything other than the decoration on your packaging" is not going to win you any friends. It's also some of the worst logical reasoning that I've ever heard. "If a 34¢ component works perfectly, therefore the paint on the pedal enclosure is the only thing that matters." Utterly bizarre.""
Sorry if I touched anyones nerve. What I am noticing..(or feeling).. since everybody is using only generic 0.30 ones, you are locking yourself into looking like everyone else..or maybe you don't want to try different things... I get that. but, that's also how corn syrup went into the Welches Grape Jelly (cause... it's "just as good as sugar") There I go with the food analogies again... dammit.
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I'll check on postage and get back. You time is valuable too.. so postage if not horrible might be do-able. We all know how SM57's do .. the benchmark man!, haha.
PS --(sorry, you wrote quite a message) --- your comments about WE, profit motive and the Soviet Union are logical and hold water. But like the food analogy, it's hard to make that work correctly.
That's not how it worked. WE was the manufacturing arm for internal and governmental (before the 1950s also consumer products, a little) . They did make money buy selling expensive stuff to the government and institutions... but it was Quasi-Governmental in practice... or "national socialism" style, which is a little bit more like how Germany did it. WE never had to worry about "going out of business". They were too big to fail.. but they did not let that rot their ideals (until the 70s/80s). They made it, the Gov bought it, it was the best... little discussion on it. Western Electric was the father of quality control. They had to guys, working there.. Juran and Demming... these guys did science level work to develop procedures and statistics on how to refine quality control and make perfect stuff. All the B stock got crushed.
Juran later left WE and went to teach Toyoda (of Toyota manufacturing) as the majority of US Business did not want to work that stuff out. Well, we know how that turned out. Western Electric had a culture of excessive quality.. until about the 1970s, when the old guys retired and things began a natural decline. .The Soviets really did not have a profit motive.. or really any motive at all (especially for quality). Other than to avoid getting sent to Siberia. To be fair, LOMO (Leningrad Optical) did make some good audio stuff.. it just depends on how they felt that day, and which factory it was.
I will test some of these 400's for "leakage" -- I was thinking this was an age thing.. but are you guys talking about out the door new??. I was not saying that WE materials and quality meant an immortal diode. I think there is a factory leakage spec in the paper I showed.
Metal film resistors: Have you A/B' with a carbon comp or wire wound? Instant difference you can hear, allot of the time. Carbon comps get noisy, and are not precision, but they have a nice sound. If you find them in good shape, NOS A/B is good brand... they are reliable too. Film's make things sound bright. Maybe OK for pedals, you decide.
