The Salt Cellar System

The image above is not a modernist oil painting. It’s an airport x-ray of my friend Jeffrey Jackson’s backpack.

- HERB REICHERT

Can you identify its contents? Did you notice the red rectangle alert-ing the inspector of a suspicious object? Do you know what that suspicious object is, or what it’s worth?

That ominous-looking black silhouette is a 1930s-era Western Electric 555W “receiver”—ie, a compression driver for use with a horn. It’s about 10" in diameter and weighs around 15lb. It requires a 7V DC/1.4A power supply for its field-coil magnet and would cost about $8000 to replace.

In the compartment to its right are some old tubes: The large ST-size (“Coke-bottle”) tube is an Elektromekano S6, made in Copenhagen around 1941. The round tube is the storied Western Electric 205D “tennis ball,” which was engineered to be a superlinear audio-frequency amplifier for applications “where power outputs of 1 watt or less are required.”

The three other (T9-size) tubes are 6EM7s, scheduled for delivery to a German tonearm designer we all love and admire.

In the third compartment is a measurement microphone and an Apogee Duet audio interface for Mac computers.

A friendly explanation got Jeffrey past the people with blue nitrile gloves. The traveler behind him, reel-to-reel tape guru Charlie King, was not so lucky. He had a Stellavox recorder and a bag full of antique magnetic tapes that had deteriorated into nitro-something-or-other, which apparently set off some bomb-sniffing dog. My other traveling companion, Dave Slagle, passed through easily—despite carrying an over-the-weight-limit collection of transformers, coils of wire, and a platoon of curious-looking homemade phono cartridges.

My backpack rolled through easily despite numerous bottles of suspicious-looking fluids and a cast-iron throat for a Western Electric 24A horn.