Vibrator Info

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Hello colleagues!
I started restoring the A-8M car receiver a very long time ago. It is designed for installation in cars "Moskvich" M-402, M-403. I tried to capture all operations on video. It turned out three videos that I posted on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLb5J5bMLs7sEmp-HrZGboUgoQk2RiDLWX
In my receiver, some old radio amateur came up with an interesting replacement for the vibration transducer.
After the work done on cleaning the radio, I encountered a destroyed insulation of all the wires in the receiver, which were used for surface mounting. At this stage, I lost my passion and the receiver is still in the table.

There was one piece of test equipment I wish I Had for testing the Vibrator.

It was the Sencore model Vt102.

You could use it on any tube tester with certain rectifier settings.

It has a three pin socket and 4 pin sockets for vibrators, and this would be plugged into a tube socket for testing. Because it would be the same electrical voltages, needed as the rectifiers.

It has two LEDs that show whether the vibrator is good or not

https://picclick.ca/Sencore-VB2-Vibrator-Tester-3-pin-4-pin-274698875957.html

Vibrators were originally all electromechanical. That is sets of contacts that would make and break when the coil was energized.
 Picture a relay having power pulsed on and off into it- That's basically a vibrator as simply as I can put it.

Back in the Dark Ages they came in 1 style- 4 pin, then other amounts of pins were added or subtracted for other features built into it.
 I have seen them in 2,6,12, 24, and 48 volt versions. The low voltage ones were used in portable radios that had small lead acid batteries in them. The ones I have seen were wired in and looked like a wax coated 'lytic in a rectangular box.  I have some military ones that have 2 sets of male plugs them, in a vented rectangular casing. They look quite odd.

 Now when changing one in a car radio, it's important to know the POLARITY OF THE VEHICLE GROUND.

 Some vehicles used POSITIVE GROUNDS! 

 Damage could occur if reverse polarity vibrators were installed. Some commercial radios had vibrators that had a big arrow on the top showing which polarity they were. Motorola comes to mind. If you are replacing an electromechanical vibrator with a solid state replacement, Polarity is extremely important. 
 Wrong polarity vibrator and you have let the magic factory smoke out.(Not to mention the money flying out of your wallet).

 Synchronous vibrators were invented to eliminate that pesky cold cathode rectifier tube (0Z4,0Z4A,` 0Y4, and a few others) that always was failing in the vehicle radios. 

  When you replaced a vibrator and buffer cap., you always were supposed to replace the cold cathode rectifier tube, as tube function seemed to fall off with age as the ionization threshold of the gas would change. Very similar to NE2 bulbs where the striking voltage will change with time of use.

At some point, mid to late 60's, IIRC, some brands of vehicle radios (Also quite common on CB radios), came with a plug on the back to change it from negative ground to positive ground.