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Voice of the Crystal
How to Build Working Radio Receiver
Components Entirely from Scratch
by Pete Friedrichs
One gauge of sophistication and class is a person's willingness to understand and use basic skills and knowledge. An artist who mixes up his own egg tempera is a cut above the beginner who squeezes acrylic paint from a tube. A true cook can mix up top notch biscuits and pie crusts from scratch without a recipe. You buy 'em frozen. And what's worse: you eat them! Yuk!
When it comes to radio, crystal sets are the place to start. You can buy a crystal, and you can buy headphones. And you can buy capacitors. And you can... Nuts! Move a step up the ladder of sophistication. Build!
Pete will take you a cut above by showing you how you can BUILD a crystal detector... BUILD headphones... BUILD capacitors... and all the rest and create a functioning radio.
Chapters include the gallows headphone, the tin can headphone, the cigarette lighter headphone, the boom detector, the paper tube condenser, practical variable condensers, the roofing metal condenser, the crank coil, thoughts on simple tuners, thoughts on antennas and grounds, and much more.
Pete built, wrote, illustrated, and published this remarkable how-to book. It's wall-to-wall how-to, experiments, photographs, diagrams, and hints and tips. There are more ideas here than you'll have time to explore.
Truth is, I outgrew crystal sets long ago. So they kind of bore me now. Been there. Done that. But geez... this book is so jam packed with the best kind of hands-on radio, I'm tempted to go build another. I'd like to take some of Pete's ideas and push them to the next stage. And that's something you can do, too.
You have to see his beautiful crank coil... his remarkable homebuilt detector... his incredible paper capacitors... his variable condenser...
Yes! You CAN build this stuff. But you will probably want to put it on the mantle rather than use it. And it will impress the socks off your technologically-challenged inlaws (the ones who regularly lock themselves in the outhouse and can't get out).
A must-have book for any crystal set builder. And in my opinion, a must-have book for anyone who builds radios of any description, old or new. Get a copy. Top quality. You'll like it. 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 184 pages
