'twas battery-drive... 9V if I recall correctly (Because D-Cells would slip off my rigging and the 9V was squarer)... may have been one of those giant 6V. I had built a lab supply but I recall I wasn't using it for some reason - probably because the cheap potentiometer would adjust/spike wildly from just a little hand motion.
Couldn't tell you the year or the generation of transistor to save the life of me. I did own vacuum tubes but not the slightest idea how to wire them up.
The noise was a hiss. I remember you had to crank the volume in source just to hear music over the hiss. I did start soldering in there figuring there was play in the contacts of the breadboard. Then I remember switching to that other board (sorry, I don't know the name but it's really thin and the holes go all the way through and there's copper ringlets around them so you can just join things up with a dollop of solder. It was on this second board I was able to get anything more than static.
