Mysteriously Mute Maestro

[Steve_P]

So are you planning to die soon then Pillwencher?

Anyway, have you got a signal generator. If you have, then make sure the IF gets out OK. On these sets it is 470Khz,

Also, have you tried picking up the oscillator on another set? Tune the Pilot to around Virgin FM, 247 Metres. Or round there. The oscillator is 470kHz below this, so this is around 745 kHz on the receiving set, About 400 metres. See if you can pick this up.

Check the valve socket itself as well, as it may be the problem. They can go funny!!!

Cheers,

Steve P.

[Yorkie]

Also, have you tried picking up the oscillator on another set? Tune the Pilot to around Virgin FM, 247 Metres. Or round there. The oscillator is 470kHz below this, so this is around 745 kHz on the receiving set, About 400 metres. See if you can pick this up.

Cheers,

Steve P.

Is the station actually called 'Virgin FM' even if transmitting on MW in AM mode, or was that a typo Steve?

Can't find it in the list of UK stations here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rad...ed_Kingdom

Just curious.

David

Best of luck with the Maestro Joe - I guess it's going to have to wait till the Civvy Set has been fully fettled up!

[Joe]

He's an old-stick-in-the-mud like me as it's been called 'Absolute Radio' for a while. It's the only decent thing on MW, in my opinion. I've also got a local relay relay within spitting distance so it's a very good signal.

I've checked that valve sockets before but will do so again. I'm sure it is something daft like that that'll be wrong.

I like 'Pillenwencher' by the way.

- Joe

[Andy - G8MNM]

Could be IF amp oscillating - due to duff screen grid bypass cap(s). Apparently this causes a 'deathly' silence according to Chas Miller in his book.

Andy

[Joe]

Thanks, Andy. That's something else to check.

Cheers
- Joe

[Joe]

IT SINGS!

I took it to Golborne last Sunday and Steve_P saw that R3 was the wrong value.

When I looked at it I saw that it was 220Ω instead of 22kΩ. I'd been looking at it for months and not seen it, talk about ever looking but never seeing, and as soon as I changed that it worked.

My temporary blindness is all the more inexplicable as with the help I received on here I knew the fault was in that area.

I've currently got some dial cord pre-stretching so I'll get that fitted tomorrow. I ought to re-spray the cabinet as well which will be something else I've never done before.

Thanks to Steve for his help and everybody else in the past.

- Joe

[Yorkie]

So the 'Maestro' sorted out a Maestro then? Good little firm that one-man 'Bodgit and Scarper' outift eh? Steve just quietly gets on with it and never fails to come up to scratch!

If you do decide to respray it Joe, I'm sure the cabinet is Bakelite so painstripper won't harm it. Grey primer as used for cars will give a nice base for the top coat. Halford's aren't the cheapest but their paints are mostly acrylic, which is much more pleasant to use and gives a nice finish if you can find a car colour to your liking. If you can't you may find a firm in Sheffield that will mix and fill an aerosol while you wait. There is, or certainly was, a little firm at Stairfoot in Barnsley who had shade cards with holes oin the middle. If you wanted to match the colour of a car which had faded through sunlight for example, they put the acrds on the panel until they got an exact match on the car as the panel showing through the hole, then mixed it and filled a 600mL aerosol while you waited. When I had my BMW motorbike I needed to match the colour (gunmetal metallic) to repair some damage on the built-in fairing and they matched it perfectly.

Utterly irrelevant to your Maestro of course, and in the wrong neck of the woods for you, but I mention it to illustrate that if you can't see a colour to your liking, there may well be a firm in Sheff that will mix any colour of the rainbow. But to use another celestial metaphor, they may want to charge you the moon, the stars and the rising sun for it!

Best of luck with it Joe - at least the Maestro now does what it should do - talks and sings

[Joe]

It fought to the very end.

Yesterday I received a very welcome gift of some pusser dial cord so first thing this morning I re-strung my Murphy U198H with no problem at all.

This afternoon I did the Pilot. I couldn't seem to get the tension right and then it snapped.

I cut another piece and managed to get it too short. This stuff is too precious to waste I managed to tie one of the broken bits on and then fitted it quite easily.

Its final bit of cussedness was my not being able to find the screws that hold the chassis in. Luckily they are 4BA so finding some others was easy.

   

It'll get a good soak tonight.

- Joe

EDIT: Spurious apostrophe clobbered.

[AlanBeckett]

It'll get a good soak tonight.

I was thinking the same thing for myself

Alan

[Tedzed1]

Internally or externally Alan?