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Originally Posted by Steve McVoy
They had no RF amplifier, and had horrible noise figures, only good for very high input levels. Also, they had almost no bandpass filtering on the input (not much on the output, either). With today's UHF and FM spectrum so full, these converters will rarely work well.
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I asked Ben Tongue about this last night. It's hard to keep up with him sometimes, but if I understood him correctly, he designed converters to work as well as possible in the prevailing conditions of the day at realistic price points. The UHF tuners built into sets after that feature was mandated were usually more selective and/or sensitive than the converters. However, the FCC-mandated spacing of signals today should allow a properly functioning vintage converter to work as well as it did when new, which should actually be reasonably well. I suspect that converters were used mostly in higher signal strength areas.
He warned that a functioning but weak tube would definitely cause problems and to make sure the tube was strong.
He also cautioned, of course, that
other brands might not perform as well as the B-T converters
I'm pretty sure some did have an RF amplifier stage.
Ben indicated that he might join us here. If he chimes in, I'm sure we'll receive a much more knowledgable answer than my layman's interpretation of his comments.
--Dave