A few years back we heard of terrible devastation via tsunami. One of the many sad facts was that no one knew that animals heading for high ground meant TSUNAMI.

No one knew because the knowledge didn’t get passed down. Think about it…
Apply this to wherever you live.

My wife came from a large family. As such, she learned all sorts of things, like a work ethic, the value of a job, and how to sew, among other things. How many skills are being lost because they’re `not fashionable’?

I am a shortwave enthusiast and ham radio operator wannabe. I recently purchased a few years’ worth of early sixties amateur radio magazines. They’re very interesting for so many reasons. It’s a time warp. I get to see what things were like to some degree. The prices were staggering… they’d be expensive today, even without inflation.

Perhaps because of the expense, Doing It Yourself was very popular. In these magazines were tons of plans for radio accessories and actual receivers/transceivers. They were pretty complex and involved lots of difficult to obtain parts and tubes.

What really blew my mind were the descriptions of some of the builds where the hams did some incredible work on their own. Knobs were homemade on lathes. Metal was bent into cases for the radios. All sorts of fabrication was done at home.

All in all it’s not that long ago, but ask yourself what have we lost? Today you could make a small fortune selling unbuilt Heathkit kits on Ebay. They come with everything including knobs and cases. I just can’t imagine the new licensee firing up the lathe to crank out a couple of custom knobs for a DIY transceiver. In fact, I can’t imagine a new licensee building much of anything. I’m probably doing an incredible impersonation of a ham who has been licensed for over thirty years but that’s not my intent. Besides - I forgot to include a rant about how important it is to have morse code skills to be a proper radio operator.

While I’m damn-near reminiscing (about a time when I was in diapers), allow me to take you back another step. As you might have gleaned from the title of this blog, I’m a tube fanatic. You know… those little glowing things… kinda like big clear bulbs that used to be in your tv. YOU REMEMBER…. c’mon… remember when your tv and radio had to `warm up’ before you saw or heard anything???

The transistor was invented in 1947. By the time of the magazines I’m reading, solid state parts were drifting into the projects. They definitely have their advantages (except when you’re in a nuclear conflict, but we won’t go there now). Do new licensees know what a tube is? Should they?

I love tubes because all of my guitar amps use them. In fact, I don’t own non-tube amps. I really enjoy their tone, as opposed to solid state. You can read any guitar magazine and all ads for transistor amps tout their `tube-like tone’. If they sound so great, why is everyone boasting that they sound like tubes?

There are still countries using (and producing) tubes. Russia is producing quite a few tubes these days, including special runs of more popular guitar and audiophile tubes. Yes, there are quite a few audiophiles who insist on tubes. I have heard them referred to as `audiophools’ but that’s not my position. I can tell you that replacing my solid state stereo with a tube one brought the difference home in a big way. Even my wife liked it better. Terms like definition, soundstage, and placement finally made sense.

Of course with any surge in product sales comes snake oil salesmen. This is particularly true in vintage guitar/amp and audiophile groups. If you talk to anybody who works on tube radios, the first thing they’ll tell you is to replace all the bumblebee capacitors. They are almost always bad so it’s easier to just replace the entire lot rather than waste time testing each one. Strangely enough, bumblebee caps are highly prized by certain fans of the Gibson Les Paul guitar. The running joke is that a radio repair guy can remove every single bumblebee cap from every radio, then turn around and sell them at a humongous profit to guitar guys. Everybody’s happy. Now if you ask me, when the guitar’s tone control is turned all the way up, the cap is out of circuit anyway, so how could it possibly make the guitar sound any better (or different)?

So as I go back and read the early sixties magazines that I could never have read when they came out, I sit and shake my head, wondering what have we lost.

There is a long-standing tradition in amateur radio called Elmering. I have no earthly idea where it came from (some guy named Elmer, lefty?) but it refers to mentoring. Your mentor was your Elmer. You somehow managed to find a radio amateur and he made it his business to help you learn and get your license. It might have been his joy to help - or so I hear. I’m really embarrassed to admit it but I’m forty-plus years old and I need an Elmer.

Don’t get me wrong… I’m relatively certain that I can pass the licensing exam. I even have a radio sitting on a shelf, waiting for that day (one cannot operate in these bands without a license). I’m looking for more of a traditional Elmer, who can actually go over some of the Lost Arts.

Good grief, man… I’m looking for someone to teach me what is virtually an ancient art. Where do you go in the Yellow Pages to find someone to teach you about tube electronics, troubleshooting, and to share the decades of accumulated wisdom? My neighborhood doesn’t even have a tv service shop; the last one closed years ago.

Somewhat fortunately for me is that, here in good old 2008, I have the internet. Every group and specilized hobby has representation on the web. I run a group for left-handed guitarists; need I say more? I belong to a few online groups where the `bottleheads’ hang out. There’s all sorts of knowledge there and I have been the recipient of a lot of good information. So there’s definitely some good news. I wish I could get some of the intimacy and immediacy of an in-person Elmer, but these groups are a lifesaver. You don’t hear about this type of thing because it’s not as `interesting’ as who killed whom or what Britney just did.

The magazines are quite moldy but I don’t mind. It’s part of the connection I feel to a past I never had, yet somehow it just resonates inside me. But I still wonder what we have lost.