[Nickthedentist]

CHASSIS

Removal was a bit awkward because of the dreaded fragile plastic tuning knob/dial cover needed to be removed, but this was eventually achieved by pulling it gently and evenly using some thin nylon cord, making sure it was not fouling the dial pointer.

After a quick vacuum and scrub with foam cleaner, the first thing I did was to remove the two extra caps and Belling-Lee co-ax socket that John described as an “aerial socket bodge”, though in fact, they seemed to be isolation components for a tape output. The Sprague one on the tagstrip looked original (or at least professionally done), whereas the “Solar” one bolted to the chassis certainly didn’t. Either way, I decided to do away with both for safety reasons.

The very short mains lead was then replaced (two core, of course), and a 15W SBC pygmy lamp found to replace the original, which was open circuit. I was unable to source one with a small envelope at a reasonable price, but the standard type fitted nicely with a healthy clearance between it and the sensitive tuning scale. Furthermore, this set had been neatly modified with a 1K series resistor to stop the lamp getting quite so hot.

After re-forming the big electrolytics, I applied mains via a lamp limiter. The valves lit and the set picked up a couple of local stations, but the sound was very distorted and quiet, even when the limiter was taken out of circuit.

I then spotted a potentially dodgy SenTerCel rectifer, which I replaced with the usual 1N4007 plus a series resistor. The original was left in-situ as a convenient tie point for the junction of the diode and resistor, after checking that it wasn’t leaky to chassis. I settled on a value of 120R as it gave approximately the correct HT.