Victor W.
Made in England - Restored
Remember my previous picture of the little ECC88 Valve?
Well here's the wee beastie that it belongs to and she's a beauty :-)
This is a 1969/1970 Telequipment S51 Oscilloscope proudly bearing a small metal plate simply stating, "Made In England". Most of the components in there bear similar motifs as well as 'Made in Great Britain' and fair old chokes me up that we used to build such marvels. Not anymore....
This example I bought as a non-worker and after some scrounging about, (without paying through the nose!), I obtained some replacement valves for her and spent some time tidying up historic fiddles, (others previous attempts at repair!)
After a bit of a clean up and final checks I hooked her up to the mains and she finally sprung to life. I stood there with the biggest grin on my face ever :-)
Total cost of purchase and replacment parts - a massive £12:50, very nice.
(Considering there's 5 Mullard valves and a couple of Brimars I did rather well as most 'audiophiles' pay more than that for a single valve!!! Doesn't bear thinking about?!)
Will she languish on a shelf as a 'collectable'? Of course not, she's a good old workhorse and I'll soon be cracking that whip. An addition of a component tester I've already started to build, (makes my DIY electronics from scrap parts much simpler - the amount of times I've scrounged a part from a broken piece of equipment to find the scrounged component was one of the faulty ones!!), and plans for a curve tracer she'll be pressed into hard service. Of course an infra red interface will come in damn handy for checking and adjusting the shutter speeds on my old cameras too.
Much like those valves I get a warm fuzzy feeling that she's working. Unfortunately I'm as old as this piece of equipment and probably smell just as musty, (Ha, ha!)
Made in England - Restored
Remember my previous picture of the little ECC88 Valve?
Well here's the wee beastie that it belongs to and she's a beauty :-)
This is a 1969/1970 Telequipment S51 Oscilloscope proudly bearing a small metal plate simply stating, "Made In England". Most of the components in there bear similar motifs as well as 'Made in Great Britain' and fair old chokes me up that we used to build such marvels. Not anymore....
This example I bought as a non-worker and after some scrounging about, (without paying through the nose!), I obtained some replacement valves for her and spent some time tidying up historic fiddles, (others previous attempts at repair!)
After a bit of a clean up and final checks I hooked her up to the mains and she finally sprung to life. I stood there with the biggest grin on my face ever :-)
Total cost of purchase and replacment parts - a massive £12:50, very nice.
(Considering there's 5 Mullard valves and a couple of Brimars I did rather well as most 'audiophiles' pay more than that for a single valve!!! Doesn't bear thinking about?!)
Will she languish on a shelf as a 'collectable'? Of course not, she's a good old workhorse and I'll soon be cracking that whip. An addition of a component tester I've already started to build, (makes my DIY electronics from scrap parts much simpler - the amount of times I've scrounged a part from a broken piece of equipment to find the scrounged component was one of the faulty ones!!), and plans for a curve tracer she'll be pressed into hard service. Of course an infra red interface will come in damn handy for checking and adjusting the shutter speeds on my old cameras too.
Much like those valves I get a warm fuzzy feeling that she's working. Unfortunately I'm as old as this piece of equipment and probably smell just as musty, (Ha, ha!)