Manager


Manager - NA4M
Manager Notes

Reviews For: Hallicrafters T.O. Keyer

Category: Keyers & CW Keyboards

eMail Subscription

Registered users are allowed to subscribe to specific review topics and receive eMail notifications when new reviews are posted.
Review Summary For : Hallicrafters T.O. Keyer
Reviews: 7MSRP: TO Keyer
Description:
Hollow state keyer. Has two speed ranges (slower and faster), adjustable weighting, adjustable volume. First commercial digital keyer to be widely marketed.
Product is in production
More Info: http://
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
1575
WA9VLK Rating: 2022-11-26
Jim Ricks' TO Keyer was the best keyer ever made (sez me) Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Its beauty is in its simplicity. You shouldn't need a manual to slog through whistles and bells so you can send code. I've owned my TO keyer for 40+ years. I've tried many others but always returned to the HA-1. The reason I suspect many do not like it is because theirs probably needed new capacitors and its resistors had morphed out of tolerance. One day mine developed a weirdness whereby a "dit" was occasionally inserted before I would send a "dah." It only took one afternoon to drill out all the tubes' grounding rivets, insert new screws and reinforce the center pins of the tube sockets to the grounding strip. (The grounds are all through chassis rivets and I found mechanical looseness and corrosion accounting for an ohm or more through each ground). Then I de-soldered a leg of each resistor and measured its value. The HA-1 has 27 fixed value resistors and I found 22 of them out of tolerance. Replacing them was easy and well worth it because my keyer now has a crisp sound, weight nicely adjustable and balance accurate once adjusted correctly ("3 dots to a dash"). Though I still prefer my bug and use it for most QSOs, the keyer is kept warm for those times when I need super slow speed or speeds above 35 WPM and prefer not to re-adjust the bug or switch to a hand key.
AA4OO Rating: 2020-02-20
Vintage goodness Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I'm still a relatively new CW operator (less than 5 years). The first time I saw one of these keyers with the glowing power regulation tubes and 500v capable wetted mercury relay I knew I wanted one.

After I became interested in restoring vintage tube gear I finally ran across one in reasonable cosmetic condition. Some damage occurred during shipment that broke the internal neon bulb used for sidetone generation but I had a spare handy, and with new electrolytic caps it was up and running.

As others have said, use a single lever paddle. I happened to already have a 1962 Vibrokeyer that works great with it, but I did have to adjust my fist to avoid losing inter-character DITs as it has no DIT/DAH memory.

It works great with my HW-101 and I don't have to worry about the key line voltage with this beast sitting in front of the Heathkit.

The sidetone is a bit square-wave-ish but the blinking neon bulb makes up for it in a mesmerizing way. I had a 27wpm QSO with it today and it ran great. It seems to like higher speeds, just like its creator W9TO did.

Get one. It will improve your fist by making you more aware of your own timing.

Be aware that by now 60 years... the original caps are super leaky and need to be replaced. Some of the carbon resistors are certainly out of spec, so be familiar with repairing HV tube gear before plugging it in or you'll likely ruin the transformers and tubes.
K5UJ Rating: 2015-05-02
FB fully automatic key Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Hallicrafters HA-1 "TO Keyer"

My favorite keyer is the TO keyer and a vibrokey single lever paddle. I must be some kind of troglodyte to prefer it. Realizing everyone here has given it a 5, there are nevertheless some hams who prefer other ways of sending CW. Here's my theory as to why the TO Keyer is not a favorite with some ops:

1. The operator is used to Iambic keying and paddles or may want to contest and push buttons.

2. The operator does not run a rig that has a cathode keyed line.

3. The operator never worked for a long time with a bug or his TO Keyer is not functioning properly but it is not immediately apparent.

Let me explain that last part. When I got my HA-1 from a hamfest, I tried it out and had difficulty with it and put it away thinking it
just wasn't right for me. Then several years later I learned that when the TO Keyer was new, Vibroplex came out with a special version
of the Vibrokeyer single lever paddle, having a gray base and black finger pieces. This is mentioned in the review below mine. I found an old one on eBay that was beat up and bought
it. I had to completely disassemble it and replace a few parts, clean all of the chrome and contacts, put on new rubber feet and a few other
fixes but eventually it was good as new albeit having a used appearance. I got out the TO Keyer and gave it a spin. That was
when I discovered the problem was never me; it was the TO Keyer.

Over the next 2 or 3 months I had it on the bench trying to figure out what was wrong. Vacuum tube logic was new to me. One thing it did was start off with a dit instead of a dah when sending the letter M or O; these became W and J. To make a long story short I wound up recapping the whole thing, and trying a number of other fixes, making
incremental progress. Eventually I noticed a 1 ohm resistance between the tube sockets and chassis and re-strapped all the tube sockets to
ground--the riveted sockets had built up resistance. That plus 0.1 mfd caps across the paddle lugs to ground finally cleaned up the
sending.

I also discovered that the keyer functioning suffers when run on a buck transformer or variable autotransformer getting the supply v. down to 115 v. This is one vintage item I run right into the wall outlet at 122 v. to work right.

As I am used to a bug, the TO Keyer and Vibrokeyer paddle is like having a fully automatic bug. If you are a bug operator and you have a properly functioning TO Keyer and the proper Vibrokeyer paddle, you will fall right into it and love it. If you are used to other keys and/or keyers, you may not care for it.

When I was a new ham I would see TO Keyers in operation at hamfests. They had been around for 10 years at that point and hams were going to solid state keys and selling their TOs. To me, there was something about automatic sending with a vacuum tube circuit that was very cool. I finally got mine around 15 years ago.

For some reason at the top of the page it says this product is still in production. Not true; you have to buy one second hand but there are plenty of them out there.
W5CGH Rating: 2011-02-10
GREAT KEYER (In it's day!!) Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Before I write another word, let make it clear that my above Summary comments and rating are for this keyer in it's prime in the early 1960's.

The TO keyer was the first of it's kind, an electronic keyer that precisely generated dots and dashs digitally based on a single timebase. W9TO never published his keyer, but he did patent it, with rights assigned to Hallicrafters. W9TO did give out schematics to his keyer for years to anyone who asked for one, and a ham store in Houston even sold a printed circuit board to build the keyer.

By todays standards, the keyer is pretty bad, but when it first came out, it was superb. The biggest problem with the design is that due to the fact that it does not have either a dot or dash memory on the input, it's real easy for the operator to get ahead of the keyer and either send an extra character or have one locked out and not sent at all. It's kind of like learning to type fast on an old mechanical "green keyed" teletype machine, you have to learn to type (and send code) at the speed of the machine, and no faster.

I used my first Hallicrafters TO Keyer as a novice in 1970 at K9NBH, the club station at Great Lakes Naval Station in Illinois. As a key collector, I've owned Vibroplex Vibrokeyer single lever paddles before, and finally bought an HA-1 a few years ago.

Oh, yeah, don't EVEN try squeeze keying with a TO Keyer as no one had even heard of that back when W9TO designed his keyer. Using an iambic paddle and losing both levers at the same time in either order will just send a long string of dashes as long as you hold the paddles closed.

In closing, if you want a vintage keyer to use with a vintage station, the Hallicrafters HA-1 TO Keyer along with a Vibroplex Vibrokeyer paddle is a perfect choice and you'll have great fun with it.

Oh yeah, one other thing, when the HA-1 first came on the market, Vibroplex offered the Vibrokeyer for a while with the base painted to match the Hallicrafters gray color of the HA-1 cabinet.

73,

Brad, W5CGH
K9TCG Rating: 2009-03-26
An excellent keyer Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I obtained my T.O.Keyer around 1961. I've used it almost constantly over the years. I even had it shipped to Okinawa when I was at the Army Mars station KR6USA. And the best part of this review? I've never had a problem with this keyer. It has all it's original parts and tubes! It still works great.
N4KC Rating: 2007-08-27
Di-di-dah-dit Dah-di-di-dit Time Owned: more than 12 months.
Though it lacks practically all the features of today's keyers, it still deserves a "5" for what it did in its day. I've had mine for 30 years, though I'll admit it's been on the shelf for the last 15. That is simply because I need the memories and other features of the modern keyer, but somehow, I can't bear to part with it. I did one mod: added a pot to vary the sidetone frequency. As the previous reviewer noted, this would make a nice addition to any vintage station, and it works very well, too.

Maybe that's why I'm hanging onto it...to go with that HT-37 I'm going to acquire someday.
KB2FCV Rating: 2007-08-27
Reliable vintage keyer Time Owned: more than 12 months.
I've owned my T.O. Keyer for 15 years and it's a great little keyer! I reccommend one of these for anyone who uses antique equipment because it can do cathode keying. This keyer also works just fine on modern equipment for those of you who would like to run something vintage but still prefer to use modern rigs. The only thing I have had to replace were two electrolytics, otherwise the keyer has performed flawlessly over the years. The speed and weight adjustments operate nicely to suit the person using it. These usually can be had in nice condition for under $100 dollars and work great with any set of paddles. Some of the coolest 'visuals' are the OA2 tubes in the back with the one that 'blinks' and the neon bulb that flickers as well as you send. Ever notice that the neon bulb flickers 3 times with a dash and once with a dot?