Heathkit to reenter the kit building business!

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Ummm, I just discovered last night that there are fans of the Heathkit CR-1 crystal radio. I still have mine.

Apropos this forum, I used it as a high-fidelity source in 1958. No kidding. With 200 feet of antenna in a tree behind our University of Chicago area apartment, I could pick up lots of distant stations. And clear sound, as I recall.

Anybody know if a germanium diode bridge would work better than the half-wave 1N34 germanium diode?

Gosh, I have or had lots of Heath test gear (as well as HiFi stuff). For example, a large box containing a harmonic distortion tester. Pity it had trouble going much below .5%.

But certainly their most astonishing kit was a ground-breaking digital FM receiver - around 1968? - better than you could find anywhere else at the time, certainly at a non-exorbitant price, if I recall correctly.

Ben
 
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From my own experiences with attempts to sell kits I don't think there is a lucrative market for it anymore.
To try and compete with Chinese manufacturers is impossible.
They can make and send the kit half way around the world for less than I can make the kit for.
Even Maplin who once did loads of kits sell very few now. They found they had to concentrate on other areas to make their money.
The disco, high power amplifier and sound to light kits have all dissolved away into past history. They mostly just sell ready made gear now.
 
The homepage has changed, but not much more:

https://www.heathkit.com/heathkit.html

Still threatening to bring out new products... the ebay page has a few used (and built) Heathkits and parts. About the only thing of audio interest is a lower-distortion mod board for the IG-18 audio generator.

Who knows how much longer they can go without at least TRYING to make money selling some new products...
 
nigelwright7557 said:
From my own experiences with attempts to sell kits I don't think there is a lucrative market for it anymore.
To try and compete with Chinese manufacturers is impossible.
They can make and send the kit half way around the world for less than I can make the kit for.
Even Maplin who once did loads of kits sell very few now. They found they had to concentrate on other areas to make their money.
The disco, high power amplifier and sound to light kits have all dissolved away into past history. They mostly just sell ready made gear now.
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Without disagreeing with the basis premise, I'd like to challenge everybody to think of products that make good sense to be sold as kits or as not-quite-finished kit products.

I guess I should start. I suppose products where doing some of the building or trimming is a vital education.

Things which require acquiring large, hard to ship components like lumber as part of the construction.

Things where individual taste or preferences tuning is crucial and can't be pre-tuned at a factory (or nobody could possibly provide comprehendible instructions in English).

Well, that's abstract but it is a start.

Ben
 
I think you are missing the point on this. The adventure that was a Heathkit was to build something with your own two hands. The instructions were excellent and the finished item pretty darned decent as well.

Chinese products are finished, or have extremely poor instructions. The end product is okay normally, but easily not the highest quality. If it came right down to it, a kit maker could buy the PCBs and case out of China and simply pack everything here. The entire point of a Heathkit was never the price. It was the doing.

How many of you would buy a kit for something like a semiconductor curve tracer? A 'scope or bench power supply? These things are more about building something that will stand the test of time. Heathkit stuff is still bought and sold. A few years ago I bought an IT-121 and built it. I use it too. I still have an IT-18 transistor tester, and the IM-18 I built as a kid. Of course I also have some Heathkit audio products, and have repaired many over the years for other people. Some of that product was actually pretty darned good. Have you ever heard this about a Chinese product?

I do buy Chinese items, like a PIC programmer and demo board. They work just fine, but don't have a case or anything else that would protect them during use. But I accept that at the price and am already figuring out how to box a few things.

Done right, I truly think a Heathkit could make a go of it.
 
I'm just stating why I think the company is out of business and IMO probably won't be back. I've built Heathkits too. I still have a function generator and a frequency counter ect. While they were neat when I built them, cheap stuff now is far more advanced. My dad built many of their ham radio kits.

Back in the day when I built them, I noticed the stuff was fairly rugged but engineering wasn't spectacular. I've serviced some Heathkit audio equipment too which I didn't care for too much.

When I was in high school everyone was building Heathkit color TVs. I remember they'd help you finish them when they didn't work. I'd hate to be the guy at Heathkit that had that job!
 
Heathkit could take a leaf from Maplin's book and adapt to peoples needs.
Maplin have changed from mostly electronic components to things like computer parts and electronic equipment.
My local Maplin still stocks a few electronic components that I might need but I am hardly your average Joe Public. I design electronic equipment and write software and have done for 35 years.

Its nice to see Maplin doing OK. They are just a mile away if I need anything.
Its cheaper to buy one resistor from Maplin than have to pay the £5 surcharge for orders less than £20 with RS or Farnell.
 
bentoronto said:
Without disagreeing with the basis premise, I'd like to challenge everybody to think of products that make good sense to be sold as kits or as not-quite-finished kit products.

I guess I should start. I suppose products where doing some of the building or trimming is a vital education.

Things which require acquiring large, hard to ship components like lumber as part of the construction.

Things where individual taste or preferences tuning is crucial and can't be pre-tuned at a factory (or nobody could possibly provide comprehendible instructions in English).

Well, that's abstract but it is a start.

Ben
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If you sell anything completely built generating frequencies above 9 KHz, you need testing to satisfy FCC regulations whereas anything sold as a kit does not need it. (Also, anything that is part of an appliance like a processor in a washing machine does not need FCC testing - the American legal system, go figure.)
 
amptramp said:
If you sell anything completely built generating frequencies above 9 KHz, you need testing to satisfy FCC regulations whereas anything sold as a kit does not need it. (Also, anything that is part of an appliance like a processor in a washing machine does not need FCC testing - the American legal system, go figure.)
Click to expand...

Not the kind of "advantage" I was really thinking new kit vendors should be exploiting.

But it did remind me that long ago in Britain, there were "kit cars" that were taxed at a much lower rate. I had a model of Lotus that also came as a kit called the Super-7, I think. So maybe there are some tax or customs duties advantages somewhere.

One amazing kit was from Dynaco, its first FM tuner. Unlike any tuner you could buy, it had a means of "aligning" the circuit. Now, that was a unique advantage to a kit.

Sad to say, with digital gear, wiring it up isn't particularly educational since even the smallest active bits are still "black boxes".

Ben
 
I visited Heathkit's site recently and found this AM radio kit......for $149. 🙁

Explorer AM: TRF AM radio receiver

There's no internal speaker, just a pair of headphone jacks. It seems to be very well built (real wood & an aluminum case) but wow, a hundred and fifty bucks for a 1 band radio, a band that down here at least offers not one music station I would want to listen to (i.e. no rock of any kind) and I don't listen to talk-only stations.

I love portable and table radios & own several, but this would need to include FM for me to consider purchasing one.
 
bentoronto said:
I'd like to challenge everybody to think of products that make good sense to be sold as kits or as not-quite-finished kit products.
Click to expand...

Arduino-type microprocessor kits and accessories are where the money is.
Velleman has a full range of small (and fairly $$$) kits for many uses.
 
River757 said:
I visited Heathkit's site recently and found this AM radio kit......for $149. 🙁

Explorer AM: TRF AM radio receiver

There's no internal speaker, just a pair of headphone jacks. It seems to be very well built (real wood & an aluminum case) but wow, a hundred and fifty bucks for a 1 band radio, a band that down here at least offers not one music station I would want to listen to (i.e. no rock of any kind) and I don't listen to talk-only stations.

I love portable and table radios & own several, but this would need to include FM for me to consider purchasing one.
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Wow, I've not thought much about Heath since my heavily modded sixer was stolen, circa 1970.

Glancing around the room I still see at least three Heathkits within a few feet of where I'm sitting, plus one in the closet. I probably built fifteen or twenty in my day.

I thought Heath was dead?
 
River757 said:
I visited Heathkit's site recently and found this AM radio kit......for $149. 🙁

Explorer AM: TRF AM radio receiver

There's no internal speaker, just a pair of headphone jacks. It seems to be very well built (real wood & an aluminum case) but wow, a hundred and fifty bucks for a 1 band radio, a band that down here at least offers not one music station I would want to listen to (i.e. no rock of any kind) and I don't listen to talk-only stations.

I love portable and table radios & own several, but this would need to include FM for me to consider purchasing one.
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That thing has been on the site for months (I forget when I first saw it). I too find it disappointing in several ways.

I've seen one of the original "TRF" receivers the description talks about. The owner showed it to me. It has two tuning dials that must both be tuned to the station for good reception, clearly between an RF amplification stage or something (compared to the later superhetrodyne design with an IF strip, that lasted almost forever and only in the last decade or so getting replaced with SDR/software defined radio). This Heathkit TRF radio only has one dial and one tuning capacitor (!). I can only wonder if it has enough selectivity to separate close-in-frequency AM stations.

It's not at all like any Real Radio of the last half century or more. I think that was a large part of the point of the original Heathkits (my father made many, and I made maybe five or ten), to have something that was like a typical product of the time. But maybe that's not feasible now.

I feel like I'm wasting my time describing this, but I can't think of who would buy this radio, maybe collectors who Must Have Every Heathkit, and while they're surely out there I can't imagine there are many of them.

There is/was an opportunity for Heathkit, with the resurgence of the DIY culture with makerspaces/hackerspaces, MAKE: magazine and Maker Faires, maybe even ham radio, but they've missed the mark with too little, too late.
 
They might sell more if they ditch the fancy case, and drop the price. Too late now, but they could also save money by not employing a 'creative writer' to write a good story, but instead employed an engineer to measure its sensitivity and bandwidth. A MW TRF kit ought to cost around $30, not $150. They should also consider a modular kit: the original MW TRF could have its coils changed so it becomes the IF for a simple superhet.
 
The response on this thread shows the interest the remains in that kind of kit construction.

But really hard to understand the logic of offering this kit. Not especially educational. Just a modest soldering job.

My best guess is: nostalgia. A few months ago, I sold my 1959 Heath crystal radio (with original headphones, of course) for a good sum on eBay*. The TRF was a 1916 patent, says Wikipedia. Doesn't require IF alignment like a superheterodyne. But ought to have a few tuned stages which can be tuned simply by loudness.

Even the headphone jacks and option of stringing a very long antenna in your back yard hark back to days of yore and crystal radios.

Maybe as Ron E says, the core of the kit building is computers and high level language software. With robotic manufacturing and stuff all in black boxes (which means little educational value), hard to see any other use.

Apropos this discussion of educational value, you need to be clear-eyed on what is educational and what is illusory. I hate Lego toys because they are no more like engineering than simply shaping the outward shape of a car out of clay. Likewise for electronic kits, just because you solder an IC in place doesn't mean you are learning much about op amps.

Ben
*darn, I couldn't find my manual. Must have gone during one of those mentally sick periods when you think you need to downsize.
 
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Given the limited range, they (Heathkit) probably make most of their money (if they make any) selling photocopies of ald manuals. I used to own an IO-4555 scope (only model# I could remember. an assembly and operation manual would together run $40. Just as steep as the $150 AM radio, IMO. I have a couple other heath components, built by an old coworker who gave them to me to get them out of his basement. He fell in love with electronics and found out that fixing consumer items is not a profitable business, little better than minimum wage. I know several other people who say the same thing. One who fixed things for big box stores and one who did board level stuff for Motorola in TN or NC, IIRC.

Computer networking is much more lucrative, All three I mentioned went into that in one way or another.
 
Maybe as Ron E says, the core of the kit building is computers and high level language software. With robotic manufacturing and stuff all in black boxes (which means little educational value), hard to see any other use.
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Sounds about right, but for me anyway, building digital-based circuitry just seems so.....boring. Just a bunch of on-off signals with OR, AND, NAND etc gates hidden inside black chips (I have a very out-of-date Associates degree in digital electronics and remember that feeling vs. putting together Radio Shack "p-box" kits, their "Globe Patrol" shortwave radio and many other analog-based projects).

I guess about the only consumer electronics area where analog still "rules" is in the audio world i.e. preamps, power amps and the output sections of media streamers, CD players and DACs. Btw I know PWM amplification is immensely popular but seemingly only for the entry-level tiers of audio gear, because (fortunately!) even my $230 Pioneer VSX-521 receiver uses a regular ol' class A/B power amp section.

And since for the most part even FM is a music wasteland (IMO mostly thanks to the Telecommunications Act of 1996)*, building a high-quality tuner is probably off the list of most builders nowadays. Ever since getting into audio gear in the early 80s I wanted to own a nice standalone tuner, paired with a good outside antenna.....but not anymore. 🙁



* thanks goodness for the internet and all its musical choices. I've owned an internet "radio" for 4 years now and very much enjoy using it to hear all the music out there - old and especially the new - but since it is really a single-purpose computer w/media player, I doubt it would be enjoyable for me to build.
 
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