Selenium Rectifiers

[Terry]

Must have been a qualification to become a service technician in those days to have a good sense of smell ...

You didn't need much of a sense of smell for a selenium rectifier!

See if you can find one and have a good sniff - even after all these years you'll probably be able to get a whiff but you can always use a soldering iron to warm things up a bit!

What you are looking for is something like this:



although I've never seen one that colour before!

Most of the ones I saw were usually made by Westinghouse and were battleship grey - although we used Automat branded ones for replacement which were a rather attractive dark green and never seemed to fail!

The rectifier in the picture is only rated at 160V so expect any you come across to have a few more segments than that