Vintage Quartz Crystal Types, Holders, Outlines & Details

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Over the years there have been very many different standards and general types of quartz crystals and their holders.

Obviously the early vintage quartz crystals had more rudimentary holders, they were larger and they did not offer the ability to provide the performance of modern quartz crystal resonators. Typically they were used in RF designs for radio receivers and transmitters.

Today's quartz crystals have metal contact plates that are etched on to the surface of the actual quartz - vintage quartz crystals were typically held mechanically between two finely finished plates that were held onto the surface of the quartz crystal using springs or other means of providing some mechanical pressure.

Also today's quartz crystals are held within hermetically sealed cans, but vintage quartz crystals were less well sealed, and some little or no sealing, and at best a rubber seal to prevent some chemical ingress. As a result these older crystals would have been far less stable and open to all kinds of chemical ingress which, over time would have given rise to considerable degrees of ageing.

Vintage quartz crystals, as well as a few modern crystal are pluggable. The early ones needed to be pluggable so that equipment could have different quartz crystals installed according to the frequencies needed. Also by changing the crystal, the frequency could be changed.

Although these vintage quartz crystal resonators were less accutae and there performance was not as good as that which can be obtained today, nevertheless they were used in many electronic circuit designs where good levels of accuracy were needed or where high levels of Q were required.M

Summary of vintage radio crystal types & details

There are many different types of quartz crystal that have been used since the earliest days of radio and electronics.

The measurements for the different parts of the quartz crystal are in line with the broad diagram below.

The details given below are for some of the more popular and widespread types of vintage quartz crystal resonator. The different types tended to be used in different applications or countries, and were made by different manufacturers in many cases.

The FT171b crystal has a handle at the top to facilitate easy removal and change. The dimensions in the table include the handle as it is an integral element of the crystal outline.

The FT171b vintage quartz crystal was used in a variety of US military radio applications. Most notably it was used in the BC-325, BC-610 transmitters and SC-669 receiver.

The FT241 quartz crystal was in use in many US military radios. It is very similar to the FT243 which is probably more widely used

The FT243 quartz crystal was in use for many years and many are still available today. This vintage quartz crystal was manufactured by a number of different companies and was originally intended for US military applications.

As the P5 vintage quartz crystal holder is circular in shape, the height is only shown as 0.55 inches, whereas the thickness and width are both the same as they are the diameter of the body.

In comparison with other forms of crystal holder the P5 crystal is rather unusual.

The HC6/U was one of the mainstays of the quartz crystal industry for many years. As equipment became smaller with transistorisation, so too, quartz crystals needed to be smaller, whilst still being able to be plugged in. The HC6/U crystal style was accordingly widely used.

The Class D wavemeter was an instrument that was used for generating an accurate frequency signal, and also for acting as a frequency meter or wavemeter to measure the frequency of signals in the HF portion of the spectrum.

This test instrument was used in World War II and the circuit design for it used a single valve (tube) and a crystal which contained two quartz elements: one for 100kHz and another for 1 MHz, or as it says in the quartz crystal resonator itself 100 / 1000 Kc/s (yes it actually says Kc/s and not kc/s).

The connections for this vintage quartz crystal are as shown below.

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