A guy talks about his recent contact with HAD

[Richard1001]

Mark: It matters when having crosstalk. Intended or not.

Indeed, I can see a sniffer being useful to identify emissions around components and then minimize the crosstalk by repositioning them.

It is acualy very usefull for repairs and for that it works very well on solidstate audio circuits too.

[FUCHSAUDIO]

Actually, a dear old friend (who was one of my mentors) showed me a device he made that was apparently popular in NYC recording studio tech toolboxes. It used a recording head (usually something worn out or a cheap cassette tape player head), mounted on the end of a Bic ball point pen shell with coax on it. They used it as a 'sniffer" to read component radiation and hum fields with a scope or an audio signal tracer...you'd be amazed what you could "see".

Andy, I'm curious. I have a little transformer going spare... could that work as a sniffer hooked up to the scope?

Stephen

Don't know, but I'm sure a tape head can be found someplace these days...

[martin manning]

Since this thread has been dredged up, I've edited the first post to add the date of the podcast it originally referred to. The GuitarWank site is a bit hard to navigate. I've also added the date range of the series '"The Dumble Stories," where people who knew HAD were interviewed after his death in January 2022. About 10 hrs total.

[Mark]

I have found conductive circuit cards have been a bigger problem than components radiating noise or signal.

Please show me pictures of your tape head and the signals that it is picking up, I would love to see them.