Heath Kit returns

[ujamerstand]

Looks like Heath kit will be coming back to business. Source

Has anybody played around with heathkit's stuff back in the day?

[mrarroyo]

Good news indeed, provided the kits are of the same caliber as the ones from the "olden age".

[Aimless1]

I don't know. Never built from kit myself, but I had friends who did. If constantly fixing and correcting the designs counts as good electronic builds then they were great kits. If not, I'm afraid I never knew any one personally who wasn't constantly tweaking the Heathkit gear to get it to operate correctly.

Final straw was an old boss who built Heathkit gear and never got it right. Thought he was an electronic genius. I'm not and probably wouldn't attempt a DIY project, but my skill set was much better than his ... and nothing he built ever worked correctly. Never knew anyone personally in the audio hobby who took the gear very seriously. YMMV.

[kevin gilmore]

I have the 200 wpc heathkit power amp in the basement, i use it ocassionally to drive a subwoofer.

All NPN output stage. Cross between the bose power amp and the crown.

Built lots of the RC gear for boats,planes in the day, the servo's were about half the price of

the identical kraft units.

Their TV's were pretty good at the time, but all the boards came pre-stuffed, so all you did

was the wiring harness and adjust the tube.

The NBS accurate clock was and still is one of the best things of its kind ever, and about

10% of the price of the Truetime. (i have both)

The test gear was pretty pathetic. The speakers were just awful.

[Milosz]

Their ham gear was OK.

For people used to HP, Beckman and Tektronix, the Heath test gear wasn't very impressive. For those whose choice was either Heath, Eico, Knight or nothing at all, it was better than nothing.

Some of their old tube amps were OK. As in, they worked and were better than Cal-Rad, etc.