What to do with my germanium transistors

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keantoken

keantoken

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Joined 2006
#1
Helloes.

I once gutted an old amplifier, and now I have some germanium transistors sitting around. I know that they have low voltage drop/breakover, but I'm not sure what germanium transistors are good for nowadays, and the only thing I see them used for by means of google are guitar distortion units, which I doubt I'll be building any time soon in relation to other more interesting things (to me at least) like coilguns, tesla coils, battleships...

At any rate, my part numbers are four 2SB415s, two 2SB56s, and four 2SB54s.

I managed to find fragmented datasheet information here

Thanks for your input,

- keantoken
 
#2
Guitar effects is probably all they're good for. They're noisy, they leak, low hfe, extremely poor tolerance. (A lot of this holds from silicon from that vintage too though.) I have a few kicking around I've been wanting to make a pedal with. I whipped one up on a breadboard, but never put made it permanent.
 
#5
You could also probably sell them over at DIYStompboxes.com as there are a Lot of poeple building germanium effects pedals these days and germaniums are sometimes hard to find...

I have built a couple Booster and fuzz curcuits with them and they do definately have a different sound than silicon....

Cheers
 
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