New Acquisitions.

[Yorkie]

The Ultra looks bonny, and in excellent unmolested original condition, and it's got FM too!

The Roberts RT1 uses the OC44/45 series, noted for longevity, and should work fine. It was a very expensive set indeed when released in April 1958 - few would have afforded to buy it outright, but would have bought it on HP, and even then, the deposit would have been quite high. It cost £17.8s.9d - £17.45 in 'new money' plus 33% Purchase Tax, a total of £23.20, which in today's terms, equates to £390!!

If a dial doesn't turn up, fortunately if the scan at the link which Chris provided is cleaned up in Photoshop or whatever, and printed onto card and placed behind the clear 2.5mm acrylic dial cover, it will look just like the original - no need to go into complications about waterslide transfers.

As you probably know, whereas most dials are printed onto glass or acrylic, which makes reproducing them a bit of a challenge, the dials on this and similar Roberts radios are screen printed onto a metal 'tray' which has a gap of about 1.5mm between it and and the clear acrylic dial cover, so there's space to add a new dial scan above the old dial. If you print to dial on photo quality paper - either matt, silk, or gloss according to your wishes, you can then use photo spray-mount to stick it over the original dial and it will be indistinguishable. (The cream painted background to the lettering will come out looking just like the original).

The dial scan at the link isn't too bad, but it's a bit scruffy and would benefit from a clean-up, so I'll do that and it can be posted on dial scans on the forum. It may well be the same dial used on other similar Roberts (EG R200) so when I've cleaned it up, I'll check that.

Hope that helps Joe.

Two very good finds - well worth the price paid!

David

[Joe]

Thanks, David. I'm pretty sure that dial is the same as the R200, in fact that's what I thought this radio was at first. Apart from gluing the ferrite I haven't done anything to it yet as it's worthy of due care and attention.

I'm really pleased with the Ultra. I had it on for a few hours on Sunday night with Absolute Classic Rock playing through it and by the time I was going to bed had forgotten and wondered why the hi-fi amp was switch off as it sounded so good. I'll have a go at getting VHF going at some stage but at present I'm a bit loathe to risk upsetting the rest - my Ekco was in a similar state and my attempts at sorting it out has made it homicidal. Learn to walk before you try to run and all that.

I'm going to be re-capping a DAC90a today. The only trouble is my soldering iron element's bust so I'll be on the gas one. It should be interesting to see how it goes as on full belt it's supposed to be the equivalent of 60W.

All the best
- Joe

[Ian E G7OLT]

Thanks, David. I'm pretty sure that dial is the same as the R200, in fact that's what I thought this radio was at first.

- Joe

Sorry, but the dials are different both in design and size. The RT1 being slightly wider. Here's a picture of the two compared. The red R200 is an early version with OCxx transistors.
[attachment=1930]

[Yorkie]

Thanks, David. I'm pretty sure that dial is the same as the R200, in fact that's what I thought this radio was at first.

- Joe

Sorry, but the dials are different both in design and size. The RT1 being slightly wider. Here's a picture of the two compared. The red R200 is an early version with OCxx transistors.

So they are Ian - well spotted, and thanks for the pic - both of yours look in nice condition!

David

[Yorkie]

I'm going to be re-capping a DAC90a today. The only trouble is my soldering iron element's bust so I'll be on the gas one. It should be interesting to see how it goes as on full belt it's supposed to be the equivalent of 60W.

All the best
- Joe

Don't forget that it's much easier and neater to recap a DAC90A if - having clipped off the old caps one at a time, (rather than unsoldering them), making careful note of which tags you clipped them from - the 'spare' tags are then used for the new caps. The tags are all 'twinned' so you can then bend up the unused tags on the tagboard and solder you new cap to each spare tag. I've mentioned this before but perhaps it won't come amiss to add the pics again to illustrate what I mean. One pic shows how I used to do it until the penny dropped about the spare tags - the other pic shows the spare tags bent up with the new caps soldered to them.

Hope that helps.

Best of luck with the re-capping Joe!

David

[Joe]

Cheers, David. You were too late as I'd just finished soldering the last one hen your message arrived. I had snipped rather then de-soldered as I couldn't see any benefit of the latter to off-set the risk of damaging things.

It took me a bit longer to do as I re-stuffed the old ones.

[attachment=1933]

- Joe

[Yorkie]

Hi again Joe,

I notice that on your DAC90A tagboard, all of the twin tags were in fact apaprently used during production, rather than lying flat, so maybe at some point during the production life of the DAC90A, they changed to that method?

Oh well - I guess we'll never know!!

(Neat job!)


David

[tiv48]

hi david i think you most be right 2 of my dac 90as have all tags used and one does not
jo if photo is after recap then that is a fantastic job
rob t

[Joe]

Thanks Rob - it is. I must admit to being rather pleased with it myself.

Cheers
- Joe

[Joe]

Yesterday I found the RT-1 had got a 1500Ω resistor which was snapped in half. I got around to looking and discovered I'd actually got one and after fitting it found it worked. As the case is safely on a shelf at the other side of the room I'd connected it to the ivory DAC90a's speaker which gave that a test too as I'd re-glued it bellows last night.

Yorkie is working on a dial scan for me so when that's fitted I'll play safe and call this set done. This will mean getting my printer to pint in colour though so I'm not counting my chickens.

If this is successful I may make a repro for the ivory DAC as the original is filthy and there's no way it'll come clean without taking the printing off.

- Joe