Beware Of Vintage Stethoscopes On Ebay

I just received a vintage "cardiology" stethoscope from Germany (it has one of those old fashioned bells with a black diaphragm on the side) from EBay & I got rippled off! It hurts when I put it in my ears & I can hardly hear anything. One of those Relion stethoscopes from Wal-Mart or even a Fisher Price has better sound quality that the POS.

Check the fit of the earpieces in your ears. Also does it have a bar lever to switch between bell and diaphragm? Check to make sure that it is not between the two positions--it should be all the way in one position for bell, all the way in the other for diaphragm. Check for damage to the diaphragm. Check for tubing that is dried out and cracked somewhere. Not that many different things that can be wrong with a stethoscope/

The lever is all the way to the diaphragm side. I can hear somewhat when I tap on the diaphragm; but hardly anything when I put it on my chest.

You've got sound leakage then. The tubing is probably cracked somewhere.

I've got a few vintage stethoscopes and they are uncomfortable to use for more than a few minutes. Soft earpieces weren't around then.

Hi,

good discussion! Well, I agree, vintage stethoscopes are, indeed, a bit of a problem: The rubber tubings may become hard and crickled; plastic tubings can loose/change their colours and become ugly; transparent plastic tubings can become yellow (example KeWe Multiphon) the diaphraghms can get hard or get cracks or holes; the metal ear tubes or ear parts and even the chest pieces made of brass can lose their chrome and even rust/corrode (beware of alluminium, which may become very ugly!); the switching mechanism of the chest piece bell/diaphragmcan get lose or untight (loss of accoustics !); the ear olives can be dirty (very unpleasant and unhygenic :-( or lose their softness ... there are some more sources of "unhappyness" ;-)

But let me tell you as a collectorof vintage Stethoscopes- I have a rather big collection, there is a foto of a part of it in one of my albums - : Nearly all faults can be repaired! You can for example adjust the bows by bending them, fitting to your ears. There are exchange tubings on the market, spare parts as ear olives (very useful when the old and hard ones hurt in your ears!), spare diaphragms etc. And there are remidies against corrosion and rust etc. Even for rubber, there are maintenance products (for motor cars, for example ;-) And many other useful things...

And, above all, it's a matter of price! You can't expect a "brand new, well functionnig" Stethoscope for a few EURO's, Dollars, Pounds. Perhaps even on made by Littmann ;-) I buy my Stethoscopes almost all from EBAY Germany. To my experience, you have a good choice here which changes often, and the prices for old, used Stethoscopes are low. But don't forget: You aquire a restauration object, and you have fun restaurating it - and even more fun when it works and you try it out on a (female) patient's chest ;-) A vintage car e.g. you also restore for driving it, don't you.

For me, there is another very important aspect in vintage Stethocopes which new ones don't have: They have auscultated many (female) heartbeats, of exited women with her bra on or not ;-) It has touched the bare skin of many beautiful women. For me, in a vintage Stethocope, there are still the heart sounds of pounding women's hearts... That's what I imagine when I buy and restaure a vintage Stethoscope ;-)

Understanding how a stethoscope works is the key to finding and fixing your problem. A stethoscope does two things--it transmits sound from the patient's chest to the examiner's ears, and--this is critical--it shuts out ambient noise so that the listener is unable to hear anything other than what is coming through the stethoscope. That is why the correct comfortable fit of the earpieces in the ears is so important--it doesn't matter how good the rest of the steth is if the earpieces don't fit right. A cheap basic steth with good fitting earpieces will let you hear more than a fancy cardio steth with earpieces that don't fit right. I have gotten good results upgrading less expensive steths with better earpieces such as the Littmann Soft-Seal tips.

The only vintage stethoscope that tend to have an acceptable sound quality I find are the Sprague-Rappaport classic stethoscopes.