From: "Frank Haber" 

No, the Heath phenomenon was deeper than that.  I'm a bit older than most
of you guys, so here's boring speech number 127x10^4:

1. There was a generation of American boys (only) with a history of
tinkering (cars, farm machinery, etc.).  They loved the mixture of theory
and dirty hands that was point-point wiring. Their fathers had RF burns
from their ham transmitters as duelling scars, and thus were sympathetic to
their efforts. Dad had ruined *his* father's rugs with liquid borax from
the electrolytics; a few solder splashes on the furniture were easily
ignored.

2. The era was analog.  Calibrated, temperature-compensated measurement
equipment was insanely expensive, and needed perpetual calibration. For us
peasants, there were ways (be happy with 3%; take home the calibrated gear
from the lab and calibrate yours as a tertiary standard for the
neighborhood).

3. Audio amplification was also uniquely suited to cheap kits.  There was
lots of value added by the assembly-line girls soldering discrete
components to tube sockets and lug strips.  A boy could do that cheaper
(early outsourcing?).

4. A boy could use lead-bearing solder, keep a mouth full of Cd-plated
screws, and no one screamed.  The line cords were also longer than a foot.

5. As someone has said, the Heath directions were magnificent.  For those
who knew what they were doing, the step-by-step "released the
brain."  You got a warm feeling from following the directions, but it
was entirely separate from, say, appreciating the circuit.  You could also
add your own [stupid] little touch, like squared-off wire runs and
shipshape lacing.  For the ignorant, the Zen of professionally directed
assembly was reward enough.

6. For test and measurement gear, Heath stuff was very tweakable.  Subbing
some 1% components pocketed at some fancy lab by a father, neighbor, etc.
gave you real accuracy.  For the friendless, there was always shaving
molded carbon resistors, nail polish, and prayer (for constant temperature
and low humidity).

7. The Heath guys were very good at designing for low component count.  The
line girls didn't begrudge us our scabbing - they packed the brown paper
bags accurately, most of the time.  Everything was manageable, and the
Heath store would cheerfully fix the backward-diode or dead-transistor sad
cases.

Flys in the ointment:

8. Competition: Dyna trumped Heath at its own game for amplifiers.  Eico
had a couple of ingenious circuits (a really good AM tunerwas one), and
undercut Heath's prices on their variants of the pervasive
standard|knockoff circuits of the age - Hewpy's audio oscillator, DuMont's
oscilloscope.  Lafayette had junk with part-Japanese construction.

9. Styles changed. Hot tubes on cheapo phenolic circuit boards never
pleased me; nor did the lifted traces and charred lug points when you had
to solder two 2W resistors to same. I never did the color TV, but I
kibitzed as two were built.  Neither worked without repair.  Too
complicated for home construction? I thought so.  Early transistor audio
sounded absolutely horrible.  Unsocketed 14-pin ICs were a real problem,
when half the chips in the kit were bad (no one could afford component
test).  And so it goes.

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5