[Uncle Bulgaria]

As someone on the young end of the forum member age curve, the problem with older valve radios for me is just that there's nothing to listen to. I have a Hacker Mayflower II which sounds marvellous, but for me FM has only Radios 3 & 4 that are at all interesting. My only other valve radio is a Bush SUG61 which is even more limited - R4 longwave for Test Match Special! Without any childhood history of listening to such sets, there's no 'punctum', as Roland Barthes would have it, to spur interest.

I can imagine collecting such radios as display pieces is also limited for the younger generation as so few of us can afford anywhere to put them.

For me valves and the associated circuitry are of interest mainly for the size of the components and the comparative simplicity of the circuits. The parts are big enough to see and manipulate when soldering, and appealingly visual. I can understand why the 'boutique' suppliers make sales despite no data for their claims, when the large and glossy resistors and capacitors they sell hark right back to the showmanship of Victorian mahogany and brass experiments, rather than anonymous black boxes.

For someone with no electronics background, valve audio circuits are about within the grasp of (very) limited theory and self-taught exploration, while radio remains quite esoteric.