Vintage Heathkit IM-104 Solid-State Voltmeter
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Vintage Heathkit IM-104 Solid-State Voltmeter in the Spring 1976 Heathkit catalog. Heathkit catalogs can be found at World Radio History and Heathkit Catalogs. Heathkit manuals can be downloaded for free here. These are the kits for which I have photos: Heathkit IM−104 Solid-State Voltmeter Heathkit HW-5400 SSB HF Transceiver Heathkit HM−1002 RF Power Meter My Heathkit ET−3100 Design Experimenter Heathkit GR−48 AM/FM Table Radio Kit Heathkit DG−140 Two-Station Intercom Kit Heathkit HD−1481 Remote Coax Switch Heathkit AR-1250 Stereo Receiver Heathkit GD−1380 Video Game Pong Heathkit IG−5257 TV Post-Marker / Sweep Generator Heathkit SA−2060A Deluxe Antenna Tuner Heathkit IM−2400 Hand-Held 512 MHz Frequency Counter Heathkit IM−2420 Benchtop 512 MHz Frequency Counter Heathkit HW-9 QRP Transceiver Heathkit CR−1 AM Crystal Radio Receiver Heathkit HW−99 Novice CW Transceiver Heathkit SA−5010 uMatic Morse Code Keyer Heathkit GD−1114 Intercom Speaker System This vintage Heathkit IM−104 Solid-State Voltmeter kit showed up on eBay. Although I only own a couple Heathkit items, I have been saving the images of many unbuilt kits in order to preserve the history. They regularly appear and disappear on eBay all the time - some models more than others. One of the earliest instances of the IM−104 Solid-State Voltmeter being offered for sale was in the Spring 1976 Heathkit catalog (p54), at a cost of $94.95 ($504.55 in 2023 money per the BLS) in kit format, or $149.00 full built and tested. That was/is a lot of cash to lay down for a multimeter that measures AC/DC voltage and current, and resistance. However, the alternative if you needed a high input impedance instrument, this was still cheaper than buying a vacuum tube voltmeter (VTVM), and it is much smaller, lighter weight, and portable due to being powered by batteries (a D cell and four AA cells). An article like "The Case for the Transistorized Multimeter" was evidently deemed necessary in the 1968 issue of Popular Electronics magazine to convince the VTVM faithful that the newfangled DMM would make their lives better.
Heathkit products were well known for the completeness of its instruction manuals, with clearly illustrated instructions. During the writing and editing process, Heathkit employees were given pre-production kits to take home and build, while annotating any difficulties or errors encountered. Doing so helped minimize the situation where the writer inadvertently assumes his own familiarity with the process is shared by the customer. Having built a few Heathkit products myself in the 1970s when I did not have a lot of experience with electronics assembly, I can attest to the user friendliness of the instructions. Heathkit still sells many of its vintage manuals for around $15, which is what you would pay on eBay.
Contact Info Heath Company (Heathkit)
Posted November 29, 2023 |
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