Garage sale find: GE P1700A 10 transistor

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by Celt

...it wasn't uncommon back then to use 6 transistor circuits and stuff them with useless transistors.

Here's one where they ran up the count from 7 to 12:

They soldered in pairs of transistors (base to base, emitter to emitter, collector to collector) most everywhere. The transistor with the lower b-e drop in such pairs will be the only one that does the work... Or it it's close, one will still take say 80% of the current. Still, it doesn't get you any more performance.

[wa2ise]

And here's the schematic: I highlighted the "extra" transistors in yellow.

The first IF amp does look like a good circuit, possibly high gain with minimal self oscillation instabilities. They're also using it as an AVC amplifier for the 2nd IF amp.