[R-390] I just realized something...

[Tom Norris]

Back in the 80's I got rid of all my tube gear, including R390's and
other good stuff. Back about 1990 or so, thanks to our list admin
I was able to get a couple R390A's back in service, and since then
I have had about a dozen come through the shop, get realigned/repaired
all the nasty paper caps replaced and go back out to a new owner.

All this time I have been using my Nearly Perfect Like New 63 Imperial
With All Matching Modules, etc thinking that at some point I had changed
the caps in it. Well..... Last week I broke a gear clamp for no reason -- the
darned thing has done that since I got it, but that is another story. Went
in to change the thing, and found out that of all the radios I had *NOT*
recapped it was *good radio*. Grrrr. Oh well, it has worked beautifully for
over ten years now even with the evil BBODs still installed. I *did* get
a set of replacement electrolytics a while back, so they were OK.

It was fun* taking the gear train apart, since I had not done one of them in
at least a year or so, so I went ahead and completely went through it and
mechanically resynched the deck and replaced the 3 paper caps I found in
there. Guess I'll order a handful of Orange Drops and do the IF deck pretty
soon while I have everything apart. While I'm at it, I have a box of white
LED's and might get brave and replace the dial lamps with a couple so I'll
never have to replace the things ever again. I plan on keeping this one
forever, so the less I have to do to keep it up the better, I'm lazy.

And maybe if I'm real lucky and get the old Black Beauties out in one piece
I can sell them on Ebay to the audiophiles as "seasoned vintage paper caps."
Surely with 40 years of use, they have should be able to impart a "mellow
experienced quality" into any audio gear they are installed...

Tom KA4RKT


*really, I actually *enjoy* aligning R-390A's and have a decent bench with
proper test equipment to do it with. If I had more room for more than
a small shop, and more time to do it in, I'd probably offer to do it 
on a regular
basis... No "make it pretty like new" just repair and alignments. Save that fun
stuff for Rippel and Mish :-)