) writes:
And of course, people want the boatanchors because they are old
Collectors rather than operators, right?

they are the rig they had when they were first in the hobby
Yes, but also because they found later, purportedly more modern
equipment,
to be harder to operate or repair, or easier to break, with replacement
parts
and labor costing more than the rig itself?

they lusted after the rig decades ago but couldn't afford it.
And still can't, in the case of Collins for example.

I suspect that is the major reason, rather than because they are tube-based.
Really? I think it takes a different mentality to operate a tube rig
than a semiconductor or digital rig. I really think the casual tube
rigs were easier for children and adolescents to operate on HF. I had
the worst time trying to understand an ICOM during my 20's, for
example.

Take away that familiarity, and the interested number will also drop.
But what if I kept the familiarity of operation rather than the
familiarity of brand name? Would it drop drastically?

Thirty to forty years ago, hams abandoned those old boatanchors.
They wanted the solid state, they wanted the features. The rigs
could barely be given away. Circa 1972 a lot of boatanchor equipment
went through my hands, because people were giving it away, or they
would sell at the radio club auction for five or ten dollars. I let
it go just as easily, because I could trade it for something more
interesting or just to sample what were new things to me.

It's only in recent years that people became really interested
in that old gear. Nostalgia. And the demand raises the prices
of those once useless rigs.

If simplicity is the issue as you think, then through the decades
there would always be basic rigs being manufactured, because
there'd be demand. If people wanted basic, they'd not be
waiting decades for it. And of course, basic does not have
to mean tubes. The bells and whistles were added because ICs
and the like made it easier to add them, but there was no need
to actually add them. There could have been basic solid state
rigs, and of course Ten Tec did offer them, as did some of
the other manufacturers (though Ten Tec lasted longer than
the rest). If you think there's a market for a bare tube
rig because of ease of repair, then it's just as easy to use
discrete transistors (or discretes with some common ICs) to build
a basic solid state rig that is just as easy to repair as that
old HW-100. The only difference is that with a solid state
rig, there's no tubes that can easily be pulled out to take
to the drugstore to test in the tester, which does't matter
because the tube tester isn't there anymore, and neither does
the drugstore sell the common tubes that was the purpose of
the tester being there in the first place.

I can't say I'd spend the money, but I want a Clegg Interceptor
from the early sixties. There is nothing about that receiver that
is better than a more recent and decent receiver. It lacks features,
and of course suffers from a relatively high noise figure that came
with the tubes. I suspect its selectivity is broad compared to more
recent receivers. I don't want it for what it can do, I
want it because I remember reading about it, a decade after it was being
sold, and simply thinking it was a neat receiver.

A copy of the receiver wouldn't be the same, and is pretty inconceivable
given that there will be little demand.

I am conveying what I think about boatanchors, which may be wrong. But
I suspect you are trying to judge a market for such a rig based on your
own desires. If you think there is a market, you need to find those
people who would actually buy it, who actually do share your thinking
on the issue, to prove that there would be a market for such a project.

I still think that most people who pursue boatanchors are doing it
for nostalgia. A case can even be made that they long for simpler
days. But that doesn't mean that they want to give up bells and whistles
and modern designs on a permanent basis. I doubt newcomers to the
hobby are going off to buy that Drake 2B, they'd pursue it later as
another facet of the hobby if they do so at all (though of course
there was a time when they might have started with it, because it
was seen as a "novice" receiver or because it was available used
for cheap). I think most who go after boatanchors have more recent
rigs, and they use the old rigs in tandem, for variety.

Michael VE2BVW