Matt J. McCullar wrote:
Purists insist on using a chunk of galena and a "cat's whisker" for the
detector, but you can substitute a plain old 1N34 germanium diode to
accomplish the same thing without all that trouble of having to poke around
to find a "hot spot" on the chunk of galena.

In a homebrew crystal radio, I tried a chunk of galena, but it did not
work as well as an iron pyrite ("fool's gold") crystal. For a "cat's
whisker", I used a small gold-plated safety pin.

In my experience, the old high-impedence headphones (which typically have
Bakelite ear pieces and a headband made of spring steel covered with cloth
or leather) work much better than the cheap in-the-ear kind found on
modern crystal radio kits.

As mentioned earlier, http://www.midnightscience.com has some great
crystal radio info.

--Leigh Marrin/KM6JE in Santa Barbara, Calif.