This last Saturday morning a post was sent out on the NLRS reflector alerting members to a moving sale. Listed with other items was a Heathkit SB-200. This was the kind of amplifier I was looking for as long as it wasn’t too abused or damaged. As it turned out, it was in fine shape actually, just a bit dusty inside, but nothing excessive. Quite humorously, all of my used HF gear has come via NLRS, which is a VHF and above weak signal club.
The unit still had the original Cetron 572B tubes in it, which made it a good find indeed.
I contacted the previous owner who informed me that only the supply capacitors had been changed while he owned it. As the picture above shows, this is a clean unit and did not show signs of excessive use. The Ham I purchased the unit from said it had not been on the air for probably 6 years, so I was a bit hesitant to plug it in a fire it up, but if it needed repairs it would certainly show it.
Quite fortunately, the unit had no issues when it was switched on. Further, it ended-up producing 300+ watts with about 50 watts in from my Icom 765.
There are only 2 noticeable improvements needed up front; the original fan is understandably not very quiet, and both of the doorknob caps probably need to be changed as the tuning ranges on the front panel are pretty far off from what is silk screened. I have to investigate the latter issue a bit as this may not be too far from typical experience for this model.
If/when I do some refurbishing, I’ll do some posts on that work.
Another Electronics Blog 