[m0cemdave]

I have, and still use, various bits of B&K gear. Some of it acquired from radio rallies (remember them?) and internet sales, and a few items intercepted on their way to skips. Like all used test equipment, it normally requires servicing before putting back to use.

Remember that much of this kit was used in situations where it would be stacked on a shelf with other equipment, with little in the way of ventilation. The whole lot would probably be turned on with a master switch first thing in the morning, and off by the last person to leave the lab ten hours (or more) later. Some will have been used 24 hours a day for long periods, logging measurements. The service life of an electrolytic capacitor depends on temperature, and many of them - B&K used a lot of Frako's, which don't seem to fare as well as Philips - will now be long past their best.

But the first thing to do is re-seat any plug-in boards, preferably after cleaning the edge connections, and clean the switches. This usually results in signs of life if there were none before.

There used to be official sets of extender cards available for servicing the plug-in boards in various instruments, and it is possible to make up substitutes if you can find some suitable stripboard and edge connector sockets.

The B&K JP0101 connector is effectively a screened banana plug and there is usually a 4mm earth terminal adjacent, so a test lead with a pair of standard 4mm plugs can be used.

The worst thing about older B&K equipment is the obsolete mains connector. It's possible to modify the mains input panel and convert to a "protruding" type IEC connector as fitted to later B&K equipment, but these are are also extremely hard to obtain. Does anyone know of a source, in small quantities?

Oh, and there are two varieties of the 7-pin condenser mic connector - an older one with a long shell and a new one with a short shell. Adaptors (both ways) were available, but like the odd connectors and cable sets they usually get binned when the equipment is disposed of because the "disposers" don't know what they are...

Some of the larger instruments are combinations of other items and use many common circuit boards - for example a 2120 contains a 2607 measuring amplifier, as does a 2010.

My fondness for B&K is due to having used it extensively in the 1980s when I worked for a loudspeaker company. It was always very well made and a delight to use.

Some manuals and service notes are beginning to turn up in obscure places online, so it's always worth a careful search.

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On a related note:
Who remembers the old GPO type 46A measuring set (made by Wayne-Kerr) and its impossible-to-replace Suppressed Zero Meter?