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Realistic 208 amplifier

A

alanp123

New Member
Hi,
Long time lurker, first time poster, so I apologize if I posted this in the wrong forum. A few months ago, I bought this amplifier at a swap meet under the assumption that it was some sort of a tube amp due to it looking a lot like the realistic 214 tuner and being sold by someone who happened to be selling several tube amps as well. It wasn't until I got home and took the top off of the unit that I found out that it was a very early solid state amp that was sold by Radio Shack as a kit.

I was wondering if someone could possibly point me in the right direction for finding more information about this amplifier, like documentation if possible. The only thing that I found online relating to it is this 1962 Radio Shack catalog page.
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1962/h007.html

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Thank you.
 
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Take a look at hifiengine.com, register for free and you may find a manual and or service manual to download for free. You may be able to find a SAMs manual also for a little $. Cool find. And welcome to AK,! Hopefully someone with experience with these older RS SS units will chime in soon as well. You can tell its a kit by how someone installed those big capacitors. :biggrin:
 
Lavane said:
Take a look at hifiengine.com, register for free and you may find a manual and or service manual to download for free. You may be able to find a SAMs manual also for a little $. Cool find. And welcome to AK,! Hopefully someone with experience with these older RS SS units will chime in soon as well. You can tell its a kit by how someone installed those big capacitors. :biggrin:
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Thanks. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the manual, SAMs or otherwise. The only thing that I found for it was an old Popular Science article that mentioned it.

https://books.google.com/books?id=L...Q6AEIPzAJ#v=onepage&q=realistic hk208&f=false

I feel that the manual is out there somewhere. I'll continue looking, but I'll fix it one way or another.
 
Maybe try looking at Allied brand. RS sold lots of other brands back then. It may very well be rebranded. I had an old mono tube amp kit that was exactly the same as an old Realistic model except for the logo. Foster and others Made equipment for them. There is a site that lists old allied and other brands in old catalogs. I lost the book mark for it though. It kind of has a Lafayette look to it.
 
Its a Realistic model HK-208. 25wpc. I found it in an old 1962 popular science Magazine article about new SS kits. sorry, my browser on this pad would not let me cut and paste. So look for HK and Knight Kits also. the models listed were Teac, Allied, Knight kits and HK. The HK was listed as being sold by Realistic. Hope this helps some.
 
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The only other thing I could find was a vague reference to it on another forum stating several models had the HK before the model number. But had nothing to do with HK the company. I saw an old add also listing it for $139 new in kit form paired with the tube tuner in 1961. Looks like the 214 tuner was the matching tuner for it.
 
Wow, the inside of that unit gives me the shivers. Someone should take it around to high schools and use it to teach kids about the dangers of drinking and soldering.
 
dyche01 said:
But look! It's transformer-coupled.
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From the little I could find its very early SS. Probably Germanium transiators, so transformer-coupled like others back then. Those big caps are scary the way they were installed.
 
Lavane said:
Its a Realistic model HK-208. 25wpc. I found it in an old 1962 popular science Magazine article about new SS kits. sorry, my browser on this pad would not let me cut and paste. So look for HK and Knight Kits also. the models listed were Teac, Allied, Knight kits and HK. The HK was listed as being sold by Realistic. Hope this helps some.
Click to expand...

I bet it is more like 12 wpc in the modern way of rating things......25 wpc was probably "Music Power".
 
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