Quote:
Originally Posted by Nicklyons2
The earliest specimen I saw, at the time, was the Murphy V659. A lovely looking thing with a VHF tuner which resembled a pre-sliced pie. The big BUT is it was a 'convertible to' set and I never saw one which had been converted... has anyone?
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They worked very well And must have been the easiest conversion of all time. It was simply a matter of turning the receiver on end,removing the locking screw on the 405/625 system switch, screwing the 'plinth' to the underside of the cabinet, inserting the octal plug from the unit to the socket mounted on the bottom of the chassis after removing the blanking plate and the job was done. The conversion unit worked very well containing a UHF tuner and complete IF strip.
One rather quaint oddity was that you had to wait for the valves to warm up in the converter when 625 was selected and again when returning to 405. I would like to obtain a 'plinth' converter. I have an excellent example of the V759 and it would be nice to find a conversion unit. I have no doubt one will turn up when least expected.
Very few of this series survived. The Early Mazda CME1901 and the 23" CME2301 tubes were a disaster failing just out of guarantee. Add to this a delicate and expensive oil filled line output transformer that could only be obtained from your local Murphy dealer and you had a receiver that was too expensive to overhaul for resale. Many were reluctantly scrapped prematurely. They also had design faults requiring tiresome modifications but once sorted out were quite outstanding performers. Murphy Radio's last chassis before the Rank take over including a motor driven remote control model with dual channel relay amplifiers and tuning forks for channel change and muting! Don't ask but it worked very well. Regards, John.