Setting up a workshop with vintage gear

[Station X]

I don't want to sound negative, but just about every item of vintage test equipment I use has had to be fixed at some time, sometimes more than once. It's very annoying when you're repairing say a radio and you find your test equipment isn't working. You have to put the radio to one side while you repair the tester

I have a Farnell E350 PSU and very useful it is too. I've had to fix it twice though. First time a capacitor went short-circuit, fortunately blowing an internal fuse and preventing damage to the mains transformer. Second time a resistor went open-circuit, or perhaps changed value. I don't remember which.

My Racal 9087 signal generator has been awaiting repair for so long that I've forgotten what's wrong with it. I've repaired it at least three times, it isn't easy to work on and documentation is lacking.

For repairing domestic sets my most frequently used items of test equipment are a homebrew capacitor reformer, a Fluke DMM and an Advance signal generator.

[David Simpson]

Graham has hit the nail on the head - We're "Vintage Radio" folk, and most likely a lot of our test equipment is "Vintage", Ie. from post WW2 up to about the 1980's, as that's all we can afford to buy, or scrounge & repair. My oldest bench item is an AVO All Wave Osc. from the 1940's, then an AVO VCM from the 1950's, then a 1960's Marconi TF995A/5 Sig Gen, and so on. I've also got 3 decent Hameg 'scopes from the 1980's, and a couple of Farnell's - Function Gen., and a Sine/Sq. Osc. A decent 21st century DC LV psu is a must, and I built my own HT PSU's. These are all 2nd hand items, or begged or scrounged, swopped, or whatever. Actually harder for me all the way up here, but youse lot of wackers darn sarf have a heap of Swapmeets/Auction/Sales/etc. to go to on a regular basis.
As you read through other threads on this Forum, don't be tempted to seek out seemingly "must have" items of test equipment. Even if you've got deep pockets. Some phools can cough up 500 or 600 quid for a CT160, which(due to being 60 or 65 years old) can be horrendously expensive to repair.
Set yourself a budget of say £200 initially, then latch on to a friendly experienced VRR&R Forum chap or BVWS chap at the next nearest BVWS Swapmeet.

Regards, David

Old equipment used proper inductances and capacitances, if it works at all it is probably near to the original idea. It can be checked against broadcast frequencies (as long as they last). Modern digital stuff is super value for money and very accurate but if it goes tits up you have no idea what is coming out or being measured.

There is one big advantage of having potentially "bad" kit, you check.

To the OP, carry on, a valve voltmeter is an essential!

[The General]

Vintage kit is fine depending on what you want to use it for. I'd stay away from the earlier 'radio service workshop' grade kit as it can be a bit basic but some of the older higher end gear can be excellent. Most of my test gear is vintage to a greater or lesser degree, the newest is a Fluke DMM I bought 25 years ago when I had my own business, the oldest probably my Ebay purchased HP 200CD oscillator & 410B VTVM from the late 50s, both valve & excellent pieces of kit. As with any older gear, it was retired for a reason so be prepared to do the resto work & get them thoroughly up to spec so a missed leaky cap won't let you down at the worst time. As has been said, power supplies are the first thing to check.
One advantage of vintage kit is that it generally doesn't rely on software so if it does fail there's no 'computer says noooo' moment as you watch the pound notes fly out the window.....
Mark

[Radio Wrangler]

Test gear from the seventies onwards was carefully designed to pass EMC tests.

So look out here be RIFAs

David

[David Simpson]

I guess I'm lucky having repaired & serviced RAF T/Eq. back in the 60' & 70's. So when I returned to radio/electronics, as a retirement pursuit 12 years ago, it was hard, but not that hard, to get my memory cells working & gain confidence again in sorting out what I needed for my wee workshop. I am just one of many Forum folk who have a professional electronics background. Hopefully you can meet up with one or two once Swapmeet times return.
Most folk would say that a decent Fluke or Newlec DMM is worth acquiring. As is a good old AVO8 MM, and a decent HP or Marconi or Airmec Valve Voltmeter. Oh yes, and a decent modern TC Soldering Station.

Regards, David

[Bufo Bill]

Thanks to you all for the above information, it's good that I have you guys to help me out, as I have no training whatsoever except what I have learned from you. I do hope to get to a few meetings in the future. If you see a large man knocking people out of the way to be first to the refreshments it's a good bet that it's me. Do say hello, but remember to duck the biscuit crumbs!
Bill.

[Bufo Bill]

@The General what sort of Fluke DMM did you buy? One of the big bench mount ones? Do these have a big advantage over the hand-held ones?
Cheers from Bill.

[Heatercathodeshort]

This is my workshop built up and expanded over years. It is not necessary to have a lot of test gear but there are a few essentials.

An AVO is very useful if you are servicing vintage equipment. A signal generator is another must have. It can be quite a simple affair such as the Advance E2 and used with an up to date frequency counter gives excellent results when aligning radio and television receivers.

Some sort of variable power supply will come in handy especially if it caters for H.T. voltages to around 350V. Mine is a 'Griffin' and came off the rubbish tip. It's heavy and a lovely bit of kit and not easily 'blown up.'

Some of the items in the picture such as the GEC mini scope and the small Cossor scope are just display items but most of the old gear gets regular use repairing these old TV and radio receivers that we all love to play with.

The large amp and voltmeters display the mains voltage and current consumption of the bench. A bit Dr Who but they are surprisingly useful at times.

I also use the Hunts CRB3 capacitor and resistance bridge but also have an up to date hand held unit for very quick checks. I also use a digital meter that gets regular use in combination with the AVO 8.

Best to mix and match the old and the new. The old gear can be very useful and cheap to purchase and fun to use. A lot of mine was handed down from retiring engineers or pulled off the tip! Good luck with your project. John.

[Radio Wrangler]

A very big factor in the choice of instruments is what happens to turn up when you're looking.

The biggest advantage of bench multimeters is that they don't fall over or off the bench at the faintest tug on a lead.

Unless you're doing something very special, then a good hand held job ought to do all you need.... But if a nice bench job turns up at a good price..... and they can cost less than handhelds when they do turn up £5 for a Datron - so how long did I hesitate?

David

[David Simpson]

That reminds me, having seen John's great pictures, keep an eye out for some decent storage box assemblies &/or racked containers. Seeing the OXO tinny reminds me to mention Ferrero Rocher plastic boxes, and wee Colemans Mustard yellow tins( All great for components, nuts & bolts, washers, etc.). His pictures also reveal an angle poise lamp - another "must have". I got my round magnifier lens type from RS along with an RS DS50 Pu soldering station.

Regards, David

[Bufo Bill]

Great tips guys, many thanks.
Bill.

[Radio Wrangler]

Electronic multimeters/voltmeters often go screwy in the presence of RF, whether transmitters or spurious oscillation of more mundane things. They can also read voltages where the source impedance is very large... sometimes just leakage.

So it's useful to have a meter around which isn't foxed by RF and which takes a bit of current to pull down leakage.

An AVO 8 does it for me. THe EA113 is delightful and has especially goood performance, but if you have any RF in the shack, you can't trust it.

David

[Bufo Bill]

An AVO seems top of people's list, then. Hurrah!
Bill.

[G6Tanuki]

I agree with Graham's comments in post #21: it's fine to have 'vintage' test-gear but you will need modern stuff to maintain it - and that means downtime from your _real_ job of maintaining the vintage production-gear!

A 1940s/50s/60s/70s adjustable-PSU/oscilloscope/sweep-generator/signal-generator is likely to be horribly out-of-calibration, and you're going to have one hell of a job getting any accredited calibration-business to take it on. I have bad memories of trying to track down a fault on some gear, when the *real* fault was that the meter I was using had - unknown to me - been dropped and was reading 20% low.

A "Vintage test-gear" collection can be fun to play with, but don't expect it to be up to serious fault-finding.

[The General]

Hi Bill, it is a Fluke 29 handheld, it's the same as a 79 but supposedly with high energy protection on the input (& a completely yellow case) It's served me well & still does.
Mark

[Bufo Bill]

Mark, many thanks.
G6, are you a Quatermass fan? Big fan of Nigel Kneale's work here!
Bill.

[G0HZU_JMR]

When I was a student one lecturer was very keen to show us that you could do a lot of diagnostic work with just an AVO 8, a homemade RF (diode) probe and a level adjustable (squarewave) signal injector/tracer. I guess the luxury items after this would be a valve based signal generator, a valve scope and a digital multimeter and maybe a frequency counter.

That's how I started out although I could only afford a poor man's equivalent of an AVO 8 as in the image below.

My first sig gen was a Marconi 801B and my first scope was a Tek 585. Both were older than me!

One thing to be wary of with bench DMMs is that some of them are only rated to 300V at the inputs. For high voltage work you have to consider that the meter is also connected to the 230V AC mains via a transformer and this can limit the external voltages it can safely monitor.

[Bufo Bill]

Soooooo . . . Basic question: when we speak of a "Valve Voltmeter", are we talking about a Voltmeter that uses valves in it's circuit, or are we talking of a machine that measures the voltages of valves?
Cheers from Bill.

[peter_scott]

A valve voltmeter uses a valve(s) internally to boost the sensitivity of the meter. If buying an Avometer then go for a model 8 rather than a 7.

Peter