Built my entire ham shack from Heathkit's as a teenager. Still have an SB-101 transceiver and SB-200 linear amplifier in storage. They brought me so many great memories I can't bear to part from them.
A team based in Arizona tried to relaunch Heathkit a few years ago. It included several Heathkit veterans and they even talked about possibly manufacturing them in the Benton Harbor area. Lots of blog posts and social media but I'm not sure if they ever released any products. Does anyone know?
My entire ham radio station was built from Heathkits in the sixties. I still have the transceiver and linear amplifier in storage. Been meaning to replace all the capacitors and fire it back up. It would be like restoring a car I drove in my teen age years, reminding me of many good times.
Got on their mailing list when they attempted a comeback but haven't heard a thing from them in years.
Or “Griefkit” was another name. But a lot of the early and mid vintage ham gear was decent and a good value. I built or owned 2nd hand several back in the day. A former coworker of mine that lived for a while close to Benton Harbor said that a lot depended on which engineer at Heath did the design work. The resulting kits were uneven because the talent was uneven and they did not leverage opportunities for collaboration.
Yeah I was fortunate to have grown up when Heathkit had stores, they blew away Radio Shack. Could never afford anything in there but the catalogs were fun to read and store was amazing to browse.
It's a shame we have nothing like that today, electronics are just "magic" to people now that is made elsewhere.
There was also Heathkit, which sold built-it-yourself kits for all kinds of electronics. Stereos, amateur radio gear, televisions, multimeters and oscilloscopes, etc.
I remember changing the channel on a color HeathKit TV at my grandparents by shaking house keys because the ultrasonic remote sensor circuit interpreted it as channel down. (It had a diagnostic and circuit diagram on a fold-down panel IIRC.)
Also my father and grandfather both made multiple technology generations of oscilloscopes from kits. And, my father opened an electrical automotive shop in Santa Clara, thanks in part to learning from HeathKit and other study-at-home electronics courses.
Count me among the people sad to see this once-awesome company decline. My dad was a mechanical engineer, and built our first stereo set and television from Heathkits. He used to take my brother and I to Radio Shack on weekends and the place was always buzzing.
My dad built a few Heathkit devices like signal generators, etc. for his home electronics repair sideline in the 1960's and 70's, and as I reached max capability at building plastic model kits he asked me to build a Heathkit oscilloscope. It was a whole new universe, but the satisfaction was indescribable. He was a wizard, and I did my best. Between Heathkit, Radio Shack, military surplus, and later Fry's in San Jose, I was in tech doodad heaven.
My dad worked at a heathkit dealer in Houston back in the 70s. Growing up he assembled both of our tvs, complete with a high frequency remote control that worked somewhere between 14 and 20khz that I could hear when I put up to my ear. We had a heathkit receiver that had an astounding 70watts per channel back in the late 70s/early 80s. I remember being able to look at the thin elastic cords that would allow you to tune into your station. Turn it fast and it had that rubber band effect like the iOS browser. I remember thinking there is nothing my dad can't make or fix back then. I hope the kits come back and are as comprehensive and cost effective as previous times.
If Heathkit got their act together, I'm sure they could become successful again. The Maker/DIY movement is big, and they do have that brand name. They could even use the classic designs, retro is super big at moment. Yes, tubes are back! :-)
I hope to be wrong; as an European I know Heathkit only from what was published back in the day on Electronics magazines, the occasional kit that arrived here and the archive of old projects of that era still available online [0,1], however this appears to me as a completely different business with mostly overpriced products; as for now all I see is the name.
I bought a morse code keyer from Heathkit when I was a kid. It was the only thing I could afford at the time but I spent many hours reading their catalog and lusting over their ham radio kits.
A team based in Arizona tried to relaunch Heathkit a few years ago. It included several Heathkit veterans and they even talked about possibly manufacturing them in the Benton Harbor area. Lots of blog posts and social media but I'm not sure if they ever released any products. Does anyone know?
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