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As far as I've found, WRL/Globe was the only company to ever offer a commercial transmitter that operated only DSB without SSB as well. The Meteor SB-175 is the successor to the earlier DSB-100, and is a very compact and simple 6 tube, 10 pound, AM/CW/DSB transmitter. It uses a pair of 6DQ6B finals as high-level balanced modulators for DSB, or in parallel with screen modulation for AM. Crystals or an external VFO (I'm using the Hallicrafters HA-5) is required, as well as a suitable power supply (mine is a homebrew clone of the WRL PSA-63). The Meteor has been getting good reports on both DSB and AM, and for $99, was the cheapest way to get a "sideband" signal on the air in the early 60s. I remember seeing one in use on 4.5 mhz at a Civil Air Patrol station in the mid-sixties, but I suspect they were using it on AM rather than DSB.
I've paired the Meteor up with the Mosley CM-1 receiver, a one-hit wonder from the famous St. Louis antenna maker. The CM-1 is a cool little receiver - it's basically a 75 meter receiver with a built-in crystal-controlled converter for 40-10 meters. It did all this, including a product detector, in a compact box using only five 6AW8A tubes, that sold for a price of $179 back in the early 60s. The fact that Mosley is known for its antennas but not for receivers pretty much says it all. Oh, by the way, that is the actual mating speaker on top of the CM-1. I found it in a guy's junk box at a hamfest for $2.00.
Both stations would be historically correct circa 1962. I may be scraping the bottom of the sideband barrel but it's been a lot of fun getting these two space-age stations on the air. |