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Where To Get Sets and Parts For discussions about swapmeets, rallies, NVCF and BVWS, car boot sales, antique and charity shops, dealers, newspaper adverts, the local tip and just about any other source of equipment (other than eBay).

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Old 14th May 2008, 2:24 am   #21
BGmidsUK
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Default Re: Skip finds

I was a bit surprised at the number of widescreen TV sets you find in the walk-in at the local tip.

Surely these can't all be "beyond economical repair"?



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Old 14th May 2008, 9:22 am   #22
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Default Re: Skip finds

They might not be BER, but often obtaining service data or diagnosing the fault can be impossible.
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Old 14th May 2008, 6:16 pm   #23
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Default Re: Skip finds

Most of my past and some current test equipment came from skips, either from College(they were OLD then!!) or w*rk. Over the years Telequipment D52 scope, mains energised speaker, assorted multimeters, decade resistance box, numerous TV's, Roberts R500, Advance Valve volt meter, Workshop strip lights, heavy mains flex(now stout extension leads) and assorted hand and electrical tools.
And a computer with a broken on/off switch(8oomHz, W98e,20Gb)
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Old 18th May 2008, 9:27 am   #24
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My son who is a painter & decorator came home the other day with a Fender guitar amp. He found it sticking out of one of the bins at a school he was working at. It had a note on it saying "Dodgy Input". Two minuits with a soldering iron and it now works perfect. The whole thing is like brand new.
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Old 22nd May 2008, 12:57 pm   #25
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Just blagged a Technics micro HiFi system from a local skip- four stackable boxes- Amp, Tuner, CD and Cassette deck plus interesting dual input (Hi and Lo frequencies) speakers. Vrious models in a HD500 series. After shaking off some sand and gravel from the speakers and making up some four core speaker cables I powered it up to be rewarded by "Hello" on the tuner display. As far as I can tell it all works perfectly and sounds plenty good enough to replace the old shed radio!

I think it was just a victim of the house extension program going on at the address the skip was at. It didn't even make it to freecycle!

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Old 22nd May 2008, 4:59 pm   #26
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I have to admit that I have had some useful things out of skips, including a nice Hitachi HA-330 70s amplifier, HP Laserjet 6L printer that I have been using for over 4 years and not even needed a new toner!, a Fender 60s guitar amp combo (not much wrong with it), sold for over £300 to a music shop and many more items, however I have not done as well as this lucky guy:

http://www.walther-mathieu.de/PROJEC...luckyfind.html

That amp and pre worth quite a lot!
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Old 23rd Jun 2008, 10:09 am   #27
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When the BBC abandoned 16mm film in Glasgow
My cameraman mate found his complete Arriflex SR1 channel in the skip......
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Old 26th Jun 2008, 11:13 pm   #28
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Another opportunity for great finds (if you have the nerve to try) are the company equipment upgrades. Disposing of old IT kit is a real pain and an offer to take the stuff away is unlikely to be refused! I have collected a load of old computers and the occasional printer as kit was upgraded.
Better than having to lift the stuff out of the skip!
A friend of mine used to go around industrial estates and knock on doors to see what he could get.

Not free, but very cheap, were the occasional large job lots that used to come up on eBay. These don't seem to come up these days.
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Old 27th Jun 2008, 9:19 am   #29
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In the early 90s my parents retrieved a B&O Beovision 8800 (the big 26" 30AX one) from a skip, they were surprised when the owner chased them down the road offereing the remote control and floorstand for it! This was years ago remember when these sets were barely 10 years old.

What was wrong with it then? The LOPT had gone. By this of course I mean the OXO-cube sized thing on the small panel at the bottom (e.g. nothing to do with the EHT), one of the wires had broken away from its pin, a dab with the iron soon solved that.

It served us well for about 10 years until it was retired and replaced with a more modern set (don't panic, we're only talking about a late 80s Beovision L2502!)
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Old 27th Jun 2008, 1:46 pm   #30
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This is slightly off-topic, but do any of you guys use the freecycle network e.g.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aylesbury_freecycle/ ?
My philips B3G97U came from there, and a couple more valve radios have been seen on my local (2) groups recently, though I always seem to get my reply off, too late! You could always post a wanted and see what turns up as well. I haven't though, given that my latest acquisitions caused a stir (enjoy the ekco 9 octave Dave W!) , I'll hold off a while. The local auction rooms sometimes can't clear stuff like electricals due to testing regulations, so they are worth a nose round as well. Our local rooms had a huge box of old camcorders and the like recently, but I don't know where they went.
Finally see your local tip/recycling centre too, they often hold on to good electricals for cheap resale.
Back to topic, I can't pass a skip without a nose (Is this a psychological condition I wonder?) ,l have retrieved PC parts, valves and timber furniture over the years, but no radios yet.
Back to the sale rooms on Saturday! Just to have a look around you understand
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Old 27th Jun 2008, 2:13 pm   #31
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Finally see your local tip/recycling centre too, they often hold on to good electricals for cheap resale.

Not in Devon. Health & Safety dictators insist electrical kit has to go to an approved contractor for disposal. You could do yourself an injury with that!
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Old 27th Jun 2008, 2:24 pm   #32
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Oldtestgear View Post
Finally see your local tip/recycling centre too, they often hold on to good electricals for cheap resale.

Not in Devon. Health & Safety dictators insist electrical kit has to go to an approved contractor for disposal. You could do yourself an injury with that!
I encountered this when I went to pick up the GEC BT302 from Bideford recycling centre in North Devon. I had to show my C&G Radio & TV servicing certificates before I could hand over the princely sum of £20 and take it away .
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Old 27th Jun 2008, 2:37 pm   #33
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oldtestgear, Your comment brought a smile to my face. And a memory! when I was a teenager I was once was setting up the picture on my dad's transistorised Colour TV, using the old "mirror from behind technique" After getting it "just right" I got a belt from the HT! I was literally lifted off the floor, and landed 6ft from my prone position onto a large sofa. My mum (bless her) came dashing in from the kitchen when she heard the agonised yell, to find her teenage son "relaxed" on the sofa. "well " she said " are you going to fix it, or just mess about all day?"

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Old 27th Jun 2008, 6:05 pm   #34
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I found a Grundig reel-to reel tape recorder in a skip a few years ago (I can't remember the model, but it was a typical single speed 1950s/60s portable type). It was shortly after a very wet spell of weather and when I "rescued" it, water poured out of the bottom. I dismantled it and left it to dry out in the sun for a couple of days and it worked faultlessly!

If only everthing was so solidly made. . .

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Old 29th Jun 2008, 8:21 am   #35
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My skip finds go back to my school days of the 70's and 80's, and have continued ever since. I gew up on a council estate in Essex and about 4 times a year the council would put a skip on the estate for locals to get rid of their "rubbish", I was always hauling out TV sets, more dual standard sets that I can remember, record players, also I remember a very early pre-war mains radio, a Victorian dressing table mirror, and, in 1985, a lot of 405-only sets were put in to those skips, and, of course, I took them all home with me. I also remember finding a radio-cassette player and then colour sets started to be put in to the skips. I would then get as many of the sets going as I could, and I would then sell them to people locally for £25 (a lot of money to a school kid in the 1980's), I can remember people knocking on the door to see if I had any black and white sets for sale (probably sue to the cheaper licence fee) and also the window cleaner buying a colour set from me, which I would only get working by tying one of the PCB's in place with a piece of wire so as to lift it upwards, as, in that position, the picture was perfect, but if it was not pulled upwards the picture vanished. He was happy enough with it. I didn't stop there, the council were often modernisinjg houses when people moved out, and so I would go and collect all of the electrical fittings, such as ceiling roses, light switches, fuse boxes and the like. If I ever saw an old cooker/fridge/washing machine in someone's garden I'd knock on the door and ask if I could have it. I usually got them going and sold them again. I well remember an old single tub washing machine with a mangle on top which I rescued and got going, a young woman who'se washing machine had broken down wanted it and came and bought it, she was over the moon with it. It ended up that I kept the older items for myself and sold the never items. Even the school headmaster gave me a radiogram!

When I got married I think my wife was horrified when I very first stopped the car by a skip and hauled out a TV set and bought it home, but after 15 years she's well and truly used to it now, in recent times there have only been things like portable black and white TV sets, one dual standard sets which was beyond repair but useful for spares, but I still keep looking.

The recycling centre in Bideford is strick about electrical laws, but that's the only one wich is, there are many more in the area, and they will just sell you whatever they have got.
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Old 29th Jun 2008, 3:13 pm   #36
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The recycling centre in South molton (N.Devon) is quite relaxed with regards to electrical goods - the only downside being that they almost never have anything worth having. I got an excellent top end Cine camera from there for £4 a few years back, complete in its original case with original receipt. It works, and I have shot a few hundred foot of film with it since.
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Old 30th Jun 2008, 2:46 am   #37
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Thought this would interest a few folk on this thread! I've just finished an art installation using about 15 TV sets I found in skips.

Most those sets were either working, or just needed a bit of resoldering , contact cleaner on the mechanical switches etc. I think I had to do some work on the Icc3 power supply though, to bring it to life.

To distribute the video clips, I used a small 'video-sender' (basically a transmitter with RCA phono inputs for audio and composite pal, outputting on UHF channel 33). Using a piece of bare co-ax in the aerial sockets of the sets the picture came in nice and clear. Over about 8 hours' continuous use in an enclosed space yesterday, I didn't even have one breakdown! many people commented on how good the pictures were on such old sets.

You can't se the actual sets that well in the images so for the trainspotters, here are a few of them: Thomson ICC3, Grundig C2105ET S815, philips KT3, Blue point set with phoenix 1 chassis, PHILIPS EC-10, PHILIPS 12TX3600, PHILIPS E-16 C927/18S, GRUNDIG P-47 CUC 3400 ,Philips cp110, sanyo 12" b&w set and some NEC 14".

will try to put up some close ups of the 'skip sets' later as I edit the photos.

regards. Ben

Last edited by ben; 30th Jun 2008 at 2:49 am. Reason: typos etc
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Old 30th Jun 2008, 9:29 pm   #38
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Interesting installation Ben. Another Art meets Science crossover! Was it a comission I wonder? Just don't set them all on fire like the Hunikin display in the Secret Life Of the Television Set, an Installation in itself [about the loss of a particular period in TV Technology] I suppose!
Cheers Dave W
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Old 30th Jun 2008, 10:10 pm   #39
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From the other side......

We recently had a skip at work, nothing interesting in it ( 2 of us that work there are avid hoarders and "recyclers", so nothing "nice" was going to get as far as that skip).

Anyway, about 20 pico seconds after the first load of old twisted steel equipment racks had been dumped, there was a knock on the shutter door - a van load of "travellers" had appeared from nowhere. I swear those guys are either telepathic or omnipresent ! - We let them empty the skip and whatever company waste we put in there over the next couple of weeks "vanished" in a few hours.

We had major trouble not looking like a right bunch of prats when the skip company came back for their skip - It was barely 1/3 full, and most of that was domestic stuff, like concrete, acrylic baths and old shed roofs that we had brought in from home !

It's a really strange experience being the "donor" for once
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Old 1st Jul 2008, 12:26 pm   #40
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dave walsh View Post
Interesting installation Ben. Another Art meets Science crossover! Was it a comission I wonder? Just don't set them all on fire like the Hunikin display in the Secret Life Of the Television Set, an Installation in itself [about the loss of a particular period in TV Technology] I suppose!
Cheers Dave W
thanks Dave. No destruction involved! it was for an open day at a non profit art collective. great fun!
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