What's a 6BW6?

Well, here it is the famous 6BW6 valve!

What's a valve? you Digital Natives may ask... Click HERE!

This versatile little beast could produce around 10 watts at Audio Frequencies and great for my first attempt at a stereo amplifier.

Our 'record player' built by my Dad, sat in the corner of the front room with a speaker built in the front. It sounded nice!
Hi-Fi was the 'in thing' back in 1969 and records and LP's were now going STEREO so my Dad and I decided that we would build a stereo record player!
The original amplifier in the box came from an old radio that my Dad had used as an amplifier, not bad kit really, 6V6 valve amp provided a fair old sound. I decided at first to strip down the amp and use the chassis to build the new one...a bit of task really as it was my first project with valves! After a lot of drilling, filing and wiring the new stereo amp began to take shape, meanwhile, Dad was building the new wooden speaker cabinets...tall, slim and dark.
OK...I had a few teething problems with the amp, the pre-amp needed to be quite sensitive because we planned to have a deck with Magnetic Cartridges and this caused a lot of instability in the amp, so much so that the poor 6BW6 would glow red!!

Bought the record deck from Barry, G3WIS, a real piece of engineering, super heavy and stable complete with Magnetic Cartridge.

At last we were all ready to hear STEREO for the first time. To test the equipment we used a record that was made to demonstrate the effects of STEREO...I can still hear it now..."June is bursting out all over" and the train whizzing from one speaker to the other! I had just bought " Bridge over troubled water" and this sounded great on the new system.

Hi-Fi at last, thanks to a couple of 6BW6 valves!

Later, the 6BW6 along with the 5763 and EL84 valves gave me the power to build transmitters that could transmit Radio Frequencies 160m and 80m!