Vintage Barker & Williamson B&W Audio Oscillator Tube Audio Generator Piece of History 

Excellent! Subscribers ​need more videos about electronic equipment! Do this!

I have one of those. All original and still works. I too was born in 1951. Thanks for the video.

Fabulous, thankyou and just what's needed in these dark days of lockdown and Quentin Quarantino!

Super cool vintage gear!

Great to see a OLD skool Tektronix 60 meg duel channel CRO , Ive got a Portable 100 Meg LCD Tektronix from 20 years ago !

Hi, If it has a lamp in the circuit, I would guess that the circuit is a Wein Bridge design. As someone else said, it stabilises the audio amplitude. Frank Hedley (GM8TXC)

Getting through the pile. Keep up the good work. Stay well

The B&W oscillator and the distortion analyzer were sold to smaller radio stations for equipment maintenance and proof of performance measurements. If you worked at a larger or more successful station you had General Radio equipment. The GR equipment had much better specs. I. The late 50's early 60's B&W updated the cabinets and made some internal circuit changes. I was given one of these 2nd generation distortion analyzers around 1969. I used it for about 4 years. I moved to Dallas, and a friend gave me a General Radio distortion analyzer. It was a far better design. Its internal noise was about 15 dB better. In 1968, I purchased a solid state HP oscillator new. Its distortion was listed as 12 dB lower than the B&W oscillator. It actually measured about 15 dB better. In 1986 I purchased the Potomac oscillator and distortion analyzer. They had balanced inputs and outputs and made measurements much easier. The GR analyzer had a balanced input as well. Now that audio equipment is digital, the Potomacs rarely get use. Most companies use Audio Precision test sets. They are capable of AES 3 digital and analog measurements. Unfortunately, they cost around $ 16000.00 and up depending on the model and abilities. The FCC stopped requiring Proof of Performance measurements in the 1980's. Most radio and TV stations still have equipment from that time period. The other big use was for audio/video tape machine maintenance. With digital servers, there is little need for maintenance. Surface mount pc boards with 4 or more layers are not repairable in the field. You just replace them.

I have that same model oscilloscope. I don't know a ton about it, but it helped me diagnose a few problems with projects I've had recently. Love the videos Terry!

My Great Grandfather was an Amazing Man!!

I rescued one of these from a old pole barn that was going to be tore down about 5 years ago. It had about 1\8 inch of pigon droppings in it. I took it to the car wash and cleaned it all up... recapped it and it worked great. I sold it to a movie prop house for $120.

Upper Darby, PA here

When I seen the B&W I thought it was bowers and wilkins B&W hahah. A lovely looking oscilliator seems that both make very nice audio devices.

What a sweet piece of gear !!

Nice piece of history saved. It works good too. B&W is in Florida now. Guess the snow in PA was clogging up their inductor's back in the day!

That unit is a beauty! Hope you can find a buyer for it. It would look great in any vintage test gear collection! Best of luck Terry!

I love the front panel.

balanced audio output for old PA amp repairs using the famous HP light bulb design

That thing was built like a tank and explains why they cost that much back then.

Broadcasters used to be required to do an Audio Proof of Performance every year to verify a number of things, primarily frequency response, distortion, and noise floor. Yes AM radio! The station would have a "Test Set" of a tone oscillator and a Distortion analyses/AC Voltmeter for those readings. Solid state successors to these were the HP and Potomac Instruments Test Sets. I have all three except for the B&W Analyser. I do have this oscillator and a few years ago recapped it to perfect working order like yours. Enjoy! Ken, W8VIW

Most obviously a copy, or license manufactured according to Hewlett Packard 200(B). Patent number2,268,872. That patent is listed as "also licensed by western electric company, inc". The "200" was a master's thesis work of William Hewlett and the first product from the garage of David Packard. They made a batch of these audio oscillators for producing the sounds in a Disney movie "Fantasia".

Terry...A lot of the early audio oscillators were used in Line audio testing and were designed to work well into telephone and broadcasting audio systems for testing...Hence the 500 ohm output impedance....

1951 good year for me, i was born

Just remarkable.

Very well made. But I’m guessing the B+W was at least a little cheaper than the HP 200 series. B+W always made nice equipment. I have a 5100B transmitter sitting in my “to do” queue.

It is a Wien Bridge oscillator... there is a mating B&W Distortion Analyzer... and was really common stuff at regional AM radio stations... I did ...wow ...way too many Audio Proof of Performance... the 500 ohm was used to input audio into the stations main microphone.... Good Luck

Glad you didn't make a tube amp out it! LOL.

An oldie but a goodie, Terry! (No, not you, the signal generator.)

The bulb should not illuminate. It is in the oscillator circuit. One of the HP guys invented the circuit with the light bulb and received a patent for it, I believe. Their first product was an audio oscillator with that circuit. It worked so good everyone started using it.

Have you put a frequency counter on it? I would be curious how accurate and linear that scale is. How would one calibrate the vfo? Would be a cool looking shelf queen.

In regard to the impedance. Would that be more on par with vintage microphone impedance?

I have question: Do you use a insulation transformer for safety to check stuff? And back in the old days (1980) i hear the story that some tubs can send out x-ray. How that story goes? kind regards form the Netherlands.

Cannot fabricate a set of caps out of something else using different ranges either in series or parallel ?

Thats unbelievable I'm barely alive

the resistors look like mil spec japanese type

It's cool. What you do with it?

l came into possession of one of these, and was hoping l could get sound out of it. Light doesn't come on so l guess l need a new fuse. lf l get it up and running [the glass tubes look like they just came out of the box] am l going to get sound out of it? Thru a stereo or instrument amp? lf not, l'll sell it as is or part out the tubes.

Wait, what? $100 for two electrolytics? I guess I’ve been away from the hobby longer than I thought. 🤭

What do you want for it?

What kind of crap is this? Strike 1) no tubes say 'Mullard'; 2) no 12ax7; 3) no words on the front panel that include the letters 'amp'. Such as 'pre-amp' or perhaps 'power amplifier'. This device has ZERO value in the eyes of a snotty-azz hipster in Seattle. I know. I was there. AWESOME VID! Thank you! 73 OM

Not going to turn it into a guitar amp? ;-)