13-10-2015, 02:23 PM
Here’s an old battery set from the early thirties – and it’s a bit of a mish mash. I reckon the guy collected a few bits from here and there until he had enough to put together a working set.
The front panel is a nice bit of ebonite with no cracks etc., I have given it a bit of a wipe over but will come up nice with a polish. The case is oak and well-made but the lid has the obligatory flower vase stain.
I say it’s a mish mash because of the parts inside. The dial is a nice slow motion one and works well but the tuning condenser it’s attached to has a Vernier vane for fine tuning – not used as the dial has no means of turning it. Also it would really only be used with two stage tuning to finely match the two condensers with each other. It looks like an Ormond low-loss “square law” one – very nice but no point having it in there so I will change that to an ordinary one. The reaction condenser is an aerial trimmer and not really suitable but works, and the two valve holders are different – one being a Benjamin and the other a much earlier one with 23 different parts! It’s marked as F G F P and I think it’s very early twenties or before but looks great so I’m having that out to use for displaying a valve I’ve got and I’ll put another Benjamin one in.
So – Monday I took it to Fred’s shed and we got it going. The first thing was someone had nicked the transformer. A quick lashup with an LT44 sorted that. The grid leak was open so a 2.2M Ohm fixed that. Still will not work then realized the fancy valve holder had problems – no connection between to valve pin sockets and the screw connectors at the sides. Very fine solder from the screws leading down in the sockets fixed that (temporarily) and then it worked.
Not very well
The front panel is a nice bit of ebonite with no cracks etc., I have given it a bit of a wipe over but will come up nice with a polish. The case is oak and well-made but the lid has the obligatory flower vase stain.
I say it’s a mish mash because of the parts inside. The dial is a nice slow motion one and works well but the tuning condenser it’s attached to has a Vernier vane for fine tuning – not used as the dial has no means of turning it. Also it would really only be used with two stage tuning to finely match the two condensers with each other. It looks like an Ormond low-loss “square law” one – very nice but no point having it in there so I will change that to an ordinary one. The reaction condenser is an aerial trimmer and not really suitable but works, and the two valve holders are different – one being a Benjamin and the other a much earlier one with 23 different parts! It’s marked as F G F P and I think it’s very early twenties or before but looks great so I’m having that out to use for displaying a valve I’ve got and I’ll put another Benjamin one in.
So – Monday I took it to Fred’s shed and we got it going. The first thing was someone had nicked the transformer. A quick lashup with an LT44 sorted that. The grid leak was open so a 2.2M Ohm fixed that. Still will not work then realized the fancy valve holder had problems – no connection between to valve pin sockets and the screw connectors at the sides. Very fine solder from the screws leading down in the sockets fixed that (temporarily) and then it worked.
Not very well
