[jcassity]

Looking into a new purchase and I am constantly amazed at electronic parts I had never heard of before.
 
A while back I purchased 3 large totes of electronics parts (caps, relays, switches, resistors ,, you name it ) all for 20$.
In this tote I found electronic gizmo’s named “Vibrasponder”… interesting!
 
Today im looking at a receiver that lived its life in Bermuda in a relay rack with others recording “signals of Intrest”  ,,  a radio made by National
This receiver has 16 tubes,, but has 13 of what they call  “NUVISTORS”.
 
Ever heard of a nuvistor?
 
I just ran it up on the web,, interesting.

[35Z5]

Introduced by RCA in early '60s, used extensively in their TV tuners as RF amp. Sold(leased?) to Sylvania in the '70s when RCA discontinued tube production. Were versions for aerospace, commercial and even in a antenna mounted amplifier to improve TV reception in fringe areas.

[EdHolland]

They are really interesting. I first encountered them whilst fiddling with an old oscilloscope, when I was still in the UK. There wasn't so much on the internet back then, but I did manage to find out what the tiny transistor sized components in sockets were.. Nuvistors. A few years later, the HiFi comapny, Musical Fidelity reportedly bought up lots of old stock to produce a range of components that used them as the NuVista line.

[Ron Ramirez]

Fisher used nuvistors in the FM tuner sections of their 500-C and 800-C receivers as well as their first solid state receiver (with a tube tuner), the 600-T. This was in the mid-1960s.

[EdHolland]

That is interesting Ron. I bet transistors for FM circuits were a difficult or expensive prospect at that time. I wonder if it was Fisher's use in consumer gear that inspired the designer of Musical Fidelity's products of the '90s?

[morzh]

I had some back in Russia.
Those were schematic predecessors of FETs, similar size too, wire solderable leads.

[RadioSvit]

Nuvistor is a compact low-noise radio lamp with high vibration resistance, made in metal cylindrical cases. In the overwhelming majority this is the triode, but there were also tetrodes and even pentodes. I have several types of Soviet novistors 6С62Н, 6С52Н, and so on.

http://tec.org.ru/board/ehlekrovakuumnye...0-1-0-2492

[Arran]

I have a few Nuvistors kicking around, I'm not sure where they came from but I think they were NOS, they are RCA brand, have metal envelopes, and were designed to plug into sockets, they have a collar around the base to protect the pins, and probably for shielding. 35Z5 is right, they were used primarily in TV tuners, probably because they were considered more reliable then the Germanium transistors of the day in high frequency circuits, at least in colour sets.
 As I have long since discovered vacuum tubes didn't simply disappear because pocket transistor radios hit the market, there were a lot of limits to the technology early on that precluded their use, and so vacuum tube development carried on, Nuvistors, Compactrons, space charge tubes. Then it became a matter of cost, tubes were cheap for almost all applications, especially when you take TV power supply construction into account, you could build a TV that was almost all transistorized in the early 60s, such as the Philco Safaris, but those cost as much as a top end B&W console set. There were many all tube stereos on the market until the mid 60s, and tubes survived in AC operated series string radios right up until 1968-69, some were hybrids with transistors in the FM tuner.
  The Soviet versions are interesting, I heard from an uncle who visited Vladivostok back in the 1990s who was apparently surprised at the fact, not only that they used tubes, but that they used such small ones in their aircraft electronics. I did not know that they were reverse engineered from Nuvistors however, but given the history of the Soviet electronics industry I don't find that surprising since they were also one of the second or third countries to adopt octal based metal tubes.
Regards
Arran

[morzh]

>>> I did not know that they were reverse engineered from Nuvistors however, but given the history of the Soviet electronics industry I don't find that surprising since they were also one of the second or third countries to adopt octal based metal tubes

Since they call them Nuvistors, I am sure they copied them.