A Goodwill Score Today – RCA WV-120A Line Voltage Meter

For five bucks, there's no way I could pass this beauty up! A relic from the mid 60s or so, it's in great shape. It measures line voltage on an expanded scale volt meter. Yep, that's all. With a great classic RCA logo, from the days when that was a mark of quality.

Sure, I could orobably buy a digital meter with more accuracy for the same price....but that wouldn't be cool!



I'm slightly surprised it was only $15 in the mid 60s.

For The Popcorn said:

I'm slightly surprised it was only $15 in the mid 60s.

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During the early mid 60s I was a kid working WWII electronic surplus places. $15 was a days pay for about a 10 hour Saturday which I normally took out in trade. An ARC 5 Command transmitter cost $5.00 USD.

Nice find on the classic meter. My neighbor works for a local Goodwill Store and most of the good stuff, if they know what it is, generally gets snatched by employees.

Ron

I did find another interesting find last night. Hanging on a peg in a zip lock bag was a 6" mirrored-scale meter from what I thought was a VOM, marked Micronta. It looked nearly new, in perfect condition. I can find something nice to do with a large analog meter – it's easy enough to change the range and draw a new scale.

On closer examination, it was labeled V.T.V.M on the bottom of scale. A VTVM sold by RadioShack? Seemed unlikely to me, but it's in the 1968 catalog.

For The Popcorn said:

I did find another interesting find last night. Hanging on a peg in a zip lock bag was a 6" mirrored-scale meter from what I thought was a VOM, marked Micronta. It looked nearly new, in perfect condition. I can find something nice to do with a large analog meter – it's easy enough to change the range and draw a new scale.

On closer examination, it was labeled V.T.V.M on the bottom of scale. A VTVM sold by RadioShack? Seemed unlikely to me, but it's in the 1968 catalog.

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Why?, it was a fairly standard piece of test equipment 'back in the day' - it would be sacrilege to destroy it just to use the movement out of it

If you read carefully, the meter movement was in a zip lock bag. Somebody had removed it from the meter long ago.

For The Popcorn said:

If you read carefully, the meter movement was in a zip lock bag. Somebody had removed it from the meter long ago.

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Well that's a shame

There used to be small 'junk shop' at a place called Darley Dale (it's long since been a Plumbers now) and I used to call in occasionally, just to see if there was anything useful.

Once when I went in they had a small 'barrel' of IF transformers, the standard little Japanese square type - I didn't buy any, and I've often regretted it, but I had no use for them back then, and don't really have any use for them now. But they were ludicrously cheap - not sold 'each', but sold as a 'bag full' - just fill your own bag.

$15 in 1965 = $143.26 in 2023.

Lax Luthier said:

$15 in 1965 = $143.26 in 2023.

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I would have thought $15 was a hell of a good days pay back in the mid 60's - so that figure seems pretty reasonable.

In a company I worked for in the early 80s, had that exact same voltmeter, but it was already made by VIZ. Sometime in the late 1970s, RCA sold its instruments division to VIZ Corp.
But other than the change in the company logos, the meter was exactly identical to the one in your photo. Even the model number remained the same.

Nigel Goodwin said:

I would have thought $15 was a hell of a good days pay back in the mid 60's - so that figure seems pretty reasonable.

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Just short of ten hours gross pay for me at $1.65 per hour (1968) Still a good investment for a teenager's startup laboratory. Seems there was less consistency in mains power back then, being just across the narrows from NYC where summer air conditioning loads causing brownout conditions were not uncommon.
BTW, in 1965 a senior electronics tech pay was around $3.00 an hour, so $15 an hour must have been scientist moolah.

This thread got my curiosity piqued about RCA and VIZ instruments and made a web search. Unfortunately Google has become only an outlet for business, and general search is a hit or miss proposition.

All I could find, in an antique radio forum, is that apparently RCA by the early 1970s had already subcontracted manufacture of all its test equipment line. The subcontractor was what was later renamed VIZ instruments, when RCA decided to exit the business completely.

Thus, the instrument you got and the instrument I used are exactly the same. Although having the meatball RCA logo should give it a higher collectible value.

Side rant: When RCA had the meatball logo it was still an electronics powerhouse, a true American icon. When it changed to the square logo, it marked the beginning of the end. Too sad that executives were too worried about logos and its image, instead of the actual products they were making.

It's so sad that many of the "big brands" of the past have been sold or traded and are used to market cheap junk today.

Everything is driven by the buck today, without regard to the future or the legacy of the past.