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Success Stories If you have successfully repaired or restored a piece of equipment, why not write up what you did and post details here. Particularly if it was interesting, unusual or challenging. PLEASE DO NOT POST REQUESTS FOR HELP HERE! |
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18th Jul 2010, 11:45 pm | #1 |
Retired Dormant Member
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: West Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 1,700
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1968 Electronica S632A3 'Carmen 3'
Good evensocks, ladles and jellyspoons,
Sometimes I fix things. Sometimes they're radios, fairly old and even have valves inside! 'Electronica' what? When this Electronica Carmen 3, otherwise known as the S632A3, turned up I couldn't resist. I have a soft-spot for Eastern Bloc sets like this; they're often an exercise in building a functioning radio set using as few parts as possible. From a technical point of view, that can be just as interesting as the all-singing, all-dancing sets with everything. They're simple, they're fun, they're unusual; dozens of them can be accumulated for less than the cost of a round Ekco...Inspection Off with the back and what have we here? Two studs sticking out of the baffle-board roughly the same distance apart as a typical small transformer and several loose wires, some twisted together. Apart from that it looked complete and unmolested.Testing, Testing Selection between 220V and 240V is achieved by fitting the mains fuse in one of two positions; it was in the 220V position so I moved it, as one does...This is going to be easy... Excellent! Slight mains hum and a crackling noise. Well, it's a start; though MW ought to be a bit less silent. LW is the same. Try SW and... faint traces of life. Attach clip lead to aerial socket. Stations! It's alive!Just fit this and we're done Fast-forward a few weeks and a small but heavy box arrives. You know how it is; look for one transformer, find someone selling a job-lot of thirty-odd unidentified HT/LT and output transformers...Amplifiers oscillate, oscillators don't That's one of the things one learns somewhere around the same time as Ohm's Law and "high voltages bite".And Finally... The observant (or those who haven't fallen asleep yet) will note I didn't mention re-arranging the mains tappings. I left that until the thing was working.Now I think I'll have a little lie down then tackle something easy. Like a huge Grundig made of speakers, knobs and buttons... Cheers, Kat |
19th Jul 2010, 6:06 am | #2 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Worthing, West Sussex, UK
Posts: 5,185
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Re: 1968 Electronica S632A3 'Carmen 3'
Well done Kat, i admire your patience, i usualy put sets like this aside for later when i cant seem to find the fault!
Quote:
Mark |
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19th Jul 2010, 7:41 am | #3 |
Octode
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Near Stowmarket, Suffolk, UK.
Posts: 1,962
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Re: 1968 Electronica S632A3 'Carmen 3'
I likes that I do
Well done Josh. |
19th Jul 2010, 8:39 am | #4 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: Bolton, Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 6,644
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Re: 1968 Electronica S632A3 'Carmen 3'
I've got one of these in the Kitchen here, tuned to Radio 4 and given time off during the cricket. Very nice sets they are too. Didn't give me as much trouble as yours though.
Handy site that. Thanks. These sets came into the UK via a catalogue by the way. Another tip - Electronica Carmen 4 : Very sensitive set, but difficult to get apart. Speaker is always open circuit. Got one in the shed. Cheers, Steve P.
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If we've always had it, why is the Car Boot open? You're not sneaking another Old TV in are you...? |
26th Jul 2010, 6:58 pm | #5 | |
Retired Dormant Member
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: West Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 1,700
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Re: 1968 Electronica S632A3 'Carmen 3'
Hi,
Quote:
That's led to a another acquisition and this post. I've still got the original valve-holder. I wonder if the Megger BM8/2 will measure some leakage between pins, and which pins? I'm still somewhat curious as to how much leakage was present and where. Close inspection under a bright light reveals some tiny cracks in the insulation around some of the pins. My suspicion is a leaky coupling capacitor overheated the ECL82, damaging the valve-holder and the valve itself and may have fried the original (missing) output transformer. Maybe I'm strange, but I like to see if I can deduce what happened to leave a set in the state in which I found it. Perhaps I've watched 'CSI' too often... Cheers, Kat |
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