Thread: wire recording

This is the part that is outside of my comfort zone. The back of the radio/control unit.

It took me a while of starting and stopping before I wrecked something to get it apart.

If I would have an instruction book it wouldn't have been to bad to do but it was a bear trying without breaking anything.

I am sure this would be simple for someone with experience but for me this will be a learning.

The capacitors are mostly the brown tubes for people that are at my level. I think there is at least one in the front view that is not in the picture.

That takes me back to my younger days when I used to build Hi Fi Equipment kits before printed circuits came to be.

That's a really simple circuit there. Just basic components.

That sounds great to me because at least in this instance I am simple.

There is much to learn about a simple circuit. I see now some Mica capacitors which I understand are pretty long life.

Gonna let those go for now.

I understand the idea behind and agree replacing all the paper beeswax ones just because of their age.

The what I think is a double capacitor under an aluminium housing is the next one I have to research!

Most of that stuff should have modern equivalents even though you don't see handwired stuff anymore. The tubes may be the harder part. They can be sourced but they can be very expensive.

You'll want to check all those wires for wear and tear especially what looks like some shielded cables.

Metal capacitors are often times electrolytic capacitors. Some of the larger ones could be the oil filled type but that's hard to tell by looking. The oil filled types are used more in components that need a lot of power.

Is it WRAD?

Wire recorder acquisition disorder?

I got another and I am waiting until tomorrow to let it warm up from shipping before I try it out.

So further on my journey into wire recording.

So the second one I got had a bad on/off volume switch. Along with a large humm. [Bad capacitors from what I understand.]

Looking for parts I found another that "worked" and took a gamble for parts.

A few extra spools that are not heirlooms for myself to experiment with but it doesn't have the hum of the other.

Does the low him mean it works or that it completely junk?

I hit a bad spot of the spool in the machine and am not in the mood to remove and splice it tonight.

If you saw in person the diameter of the wire you would understand!

Tomorrow is another day!

Often times hum comes from the tubes. They can be subject to all kinds of harmonics. After the tubes it gets complicated. A bad shielded cable can do the same and a bad solder connection too. Then all the semiconductors. You would need a schematic and a multimeter to start checking.

I goofed in stating that the on/ off volume control was bad.

It is the on/off tone control. OOps

Anyway the one i bought for parts is better than the one I wanted to fix in many ways. Not as pretty but it works.

I repaired a couple of bad spots in the wire and listened to some music recorded circa 1950, Grandma thanking someone for a card, and a girl telling about how proud she was with her high school play.