For those who appreciate the truly arcane -- and innovative, see this link friend Joe Sousa sent me the other day:
http://www.radiomuseum.org/forum/sputni ... radio.html
This is a full superhet AM radio made from Russian rod-grid beam tubes, a very bizarre type of construction (no grids!) that uses beam forming and steering with rods instead of grid wires. This opens up some interesting unconventional circuits, and Joe took this one all the way. For the places where odd higher and negative voltages are needed, he uses the local oscillator to generate them for the rest of the circuit.
He's sent me a few of these, and I have a use for them in mind. Few other things could work as sensitive in-tank preamps for weak signals and live in a fusion device. But these will...