Design, construction, and performance of a solid state marginal oscillator for detection of ions in ion cyclotron resonance experiments are described. Special design features include noise matching a high Q tank to an FET preamplifier which sacrifices voltage level for improved S/N ratio, amplitude limiting to remove noise from the feedback signal, and impedance matching the feedback resistor to the tank to minimize phase shift, parasitic capacitive coupling, and tank loading. A simple electrical circuit which simulates power absorption by ions for performance testing and comparison among marginal oscillators for icr applications is also described.