1 - Zincite as an replacement for germanium in ITC application by Andrés Ramos

[Andres Ramos]

Most ITC aficionados start with the gold old germanium diodes as noise sources for ITC sessions. The noise structure is more rough compared to silicon diode noise and the noise much louder than with the latter ones. The best diodes for ITC I ever tried were the old OA9. These are very rare now and probably obsolete. Years ago i stumbled upon an article about the work of Oleg Lossew. He was a russian radio technician and the first one who scrutinized semiconductor properties of certain materials like crystals and sulphite- and oxide layers. He was supposed to be the first one who encountered the LED effect in carborundum crystals as well. Then  I found the website of Nyle Steiner who turned Lossew works into real practice.

I followed Nyles advices and fabricated a zinc oxide substrate by burning a piece of zinc galvanized iron in the flame of a butan torch. A layer of white and black zincite flakes was the result. If you now take the iron sheet as one electrode and a spring beared steel needle as a second, slightly touching the zincite flakes and you route a small current over a resistor in series through it, then you'll hear a strong noise if you are tapping the audio at the zincite electrode and pass it over to an amplifier or recorder.

I made a real device from this setup.

The noise is pretty strong with spirit voices but of very low quality. However if you give the spirits some time to align with the physical properties of this setup, it will go better.

A drawback is that the bias you need to establish by properly placing the needle is unstable. It take some seconds to find a place for the needle tip that gives good noise. Sadly by the time because of the weight, the needle will press itself though the soft flakes and the bias will change. So readjustment or even replacing of the zincite substrate will be necessary.

 

Electronic schematic of Zincite EVP-Receiver

 

Making an EVP receiving device

[Arizona EVP]

Hello,

Have you tried a piece of meteorite in place of germanium or zincite?

Ron

[Andres Ramos]

Hello Ron! Thanks for your comment. What an intriguing idea! No, i haven't done this so far. Do you you have a meteorite by hand?

Just joking. I remember there are small meteorits on Ebay.  Meteorits contain iron mostly thus some conductivity can be expected. Really nice idea. Will follow it!

[Andres Ramos]

Addendum: Just ordered a box with iron meteorite fragments on Ebay.

[Arizona EVP]

On 10/14/2020 at 10:56 PM, Andres Ramos said:

Hello Ron! Thanks for your comment. What an intriguing idea! No, i haven't done this so far. Do you you have a meteorite by hand?

Just joking. I remember there are small meteorits on Ebay.  Meteorits contain iron mostly thus some conductivity can be expected. Really nice idea. Will follow it!

Actually I do have some.  If you want I can shave off a small piece from a 4 pound nantan china meteorite.

Do you live in in the US?

 

[Andres Ramos]

Sorry, I live in northern germany. Too much of a distance to throw it over the atlantic.

But thanks for wanting to share it with me.

[Andres Ramos]

BTW i got the meteorite fragments by now. Will see when i have time to test them.

[CanadaKim]

Dont give up on ancient diodes just yet, I have purchased many on ebay, of various styles. There seems to be an abundance of European Military surplus ones available, quite cheap

[Andres Ramos]

Certainly not. Those old diodes are nice noisy beasts and the setups with them are rather simple to get some usable noise from.