Keritech Electronics Youtube Channel - Two Years!

[Keri Szafir]

Hello there, kitties - I'm Keri, the vacuum tube witch! Running the most underrated tech channel on Youtube for two years now.


Just who am I?

I'm a 37 years old autistic trans woman from Poland, trying to get by on a budget tighter than Ethel Granger's laces, running my electronics lab in the center of Gdańsk. I've been doing electronics since I was a teen, learned the stuff on secondhand components from dismantled devices and schematics/articles in the magazines or the web. Real deal discrete transistors - none of that Arduino rubbish! I stayed away from integrated circuits for a long time too.


...and what the F am I even doing there?

My channel is primarily focused on vintage electronics, audio and vacuum tube tech. Teardown videos, fixing stuff, building amps, some oddball projects.
I got hooked on the tubes in my high school years, massively inspired by Fallout, which sparked my interest in the Cold War era electronic engineering. I serviced vintage gear, its beauty captivated me. I started building my own amplifiers, every one of them is unique and custom made with vintage parts. I use whatever I can get. I'm a scavenger at heart, salvaging and reviving old tech. I'm also getting into tinkering with vintage computers, it's fascinating. Secretly dreaming of making an all tube computer someday... too many Usagi Electric inspirations, I love his channel.


How do I run my channel?

It's a strictly non-commercial thing. I'm not a professional Youtuber, or any kind of career person. As of now it's less than a thousand subscribers and relying on ERAs (Extrayoutubular Recommendation Algorithms). I'm also hugely reluctant to editing - if a video needs it, it ends up in a limbo. Great Scott, that's 1.21 jiggabytes of videos in editing! So, I tend to shoot a video using live semi-automatic scene switching in OBS, and if I need to edit anything, I use Shotcut or KDEnlive. The channel runs entirely on free and open source software running under Debian.

I'm total crap for promotion or running a business. I Keri on anyway.


My Lab:

I've had an electronics lab in one form or another for 20 years, starting in the 2000s. It's been evolving with new test gear and tools, though the Keritech era (2020 onwards) saw the biggest progress.
Being on a very limited budget, I can't just buy new test gear; I appreciate good quality vintage or second-hand equipment, like a Fluke 179 or Tek 468. It's good enough for the work I do.


The 2 year anniversary video:




And a little slightly outdated tour of my lab: