[ribbonmicsrus]

Andy
It looks as if yours is around 200 higher than mine in serial number so we have the AR88. Above sn 3000-10000 the designations D and LF became normal.
Also note the o/p transformer arrangement is different from the D and LF models in that it uses a 2.5 ohm output and 20 ohms for headphones output.

The advice to fit two NE2 neons in series is a good idea, alas too late for mine as it had expired. I just unpotted the original and fitted in the can a small single ended transformer for a 6V6, works well.

I have nearly finished refurbing mine, opened up all the bathtub capacitors with care as the oil if any left is PCB based and now banned. I fitted modern Polyester caps with a 630v rating, bit overkill but to hand. I also replaced the PSU smoothing capacitors, C96, C67 and C98 with 4.7uF 500v polyesters.

Quite a few resistors had gone high and some of the capacitors in the RF section were changed.

The performance of the receiver with new components is amazing, with only about a foot of wire in the aerial socket even on Range 1 is really good. they are very stable as well. You might have to increase BFO injection a bit to make ssb reception a bit easier. I decided against fitting a product detector.

Be careful of the wiring in these models, being basically lazy decided against PVC rewire but had to re-sleeve one or two places with heatshrink sleeving to be on safe side.

My paxolin board with the bias resistors etc. had had a hard life and was brittle, so made up new board with stand offs and wire wound resistors in the biasing section.

Mine did not have S meter but have been given a similar meter and reprinted scale using a meter / scale drawing program called Galva 2.0.

Oh, and one final point, if you have quite a high noise level with no aerial connected, it was know early versions had an instability problem with V7 the 3rd IF stage. It was caused by rather long leads to the decoupling capacitors associated with that stage. In mine it was the screened grid decoupling that was the problem, so fitted a short length of RG174 coax to the decoupling capacitor C103. Later receivers had this factory fitted.
Also if fitted make sure C119 is disconnected, these used to go s/c and another reason the output transformers failed. I fitted a 3.3nF 400V across the primary, this is safe.

Have fun (and a bad back!!!).
73
Andy