Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[Zelandeth]

It's an odd fault. Pretty sure at least one of the transistors on the speed control module has failed short circuit given that the fan immediately came on the moment the ignition was turned on - it didn't wait for the climate control to wake up or anything.

It's in the garage just now, but I'll dig it out and check what transistors are on it later on.

[Zelandeth]

Good news everyone!

Looks like the new project will be delivered over to my place on Tuesday all being well. Obviously you can expect a shed load more photos then.

I've also been working on some improvements to the lighting in the garage. Ours like many was originally equipped with a single overhead light fitting. Albeit a decent quality one unlike you're likely to see these days. That's fine for wandering in to get stuff out the freezer, but utterly useless in a working area.

Once I'm done there will be somewhere in the region of 1.5kW of additional fluorescent lighting attached to the walls in my garage. Only one fitting fully set up so far, but getting there.

There are four more of these 3x40W beasts (circa 1967 and still going strong) and a random assortment of other fixtures I've accumulated over the last few years for this job. All magnetic gear so should be a case of fit and forget rather than having HF gear going pop after six months.

Gives me a bit of satisfaction that these five fittings are getting to live on doing what they were built to do, the rest having been skipped when my old work building was wastefully torn down for no good reason. Appropriate I think too given Thorn sponsored pretty much all the electrical kit when our house was built, and these fittings were originally made by Atlas (part of the same group).

Now I know that our cantankerous RCD will not take kindly to me dumping 1.5kW of inductive load on it in one chunk (and I'm really not going to need 75,000 plus change worth of lumens all the time), so made sense to split it into groups. I went for five.

Was also really pleased to see that the MK modular switch system still exists (even if it's a bit more plasticy these days than I remember. I used to massively enjoy getting to dig about in the parts boxes in my father's workshop at work and make up these things in the early 90s. As such I enjoyed myself far more than I probably should have making this up. Five lighting zones (each corner and the end opposite the door) and a pilot light...well because I wanted a glowy red light! Seriously it's actually intended so you can find the thing in the dark.

So hopefully even if I run out of daylight on Tuesday I should be able to get some photos!

[CitroJim]

Those lights really look the business Zel! It'll be like artificial daylight in your workshop...

You'll have all the SAD sufferers descending upon you now for a bit of light therapy

[Zelandeth]

Reckon you'll be able to see this place from orbit once everything's on! I'm a great believer that there's no such thing as too much light in a space like a garage. Planning on painting the floor white at some point as well to assist further in shadow elimination.

The artificial daylight aspect should be assisted by a case of Northlight full spectrum daylight simulation tubes I've got. Sadly they're nigh on impossible to get hold of these days (in 4' 40W form anyway). Once they're done it'll be back to boring old 535 as I've got a few dozen spares, unless I come across anything more suitable anyway. I'd really rather stick to the T12 lamps if I can as the larger surface area helps eliminate glare and further diffuse any shadows. However that means that I'm stuck with NOS sources as far as new lamps are concerned.

[CitroJim]

Reckon you'll be able to see this place from orbit once everything's on!

[Hell Razor5543]

I know somebody who replaced a 60W lightbulb on the stair landing with a 200W bulb. He accidentally left it on one night, and woke up to find a Boeing 747-400 on the driveway, an Airbus A380 on the road outside, and numerous aircraft overhead. The CAA made him replace the bulb with another 60W one.

[Zelandeth]

Only 200W...Amateur!

Think the most powerful single lamp I've got anywhere is 3.5kW, sadly never been able to light that one as it requires rather exotic control gear and forced air cooling.

Well, there's a 20kW short arc xenon lamp too - but that's been de-gassed so is purely a display curio. If they decide to let go (which they quite often do with little or no provocation) the resulting bang which will shower finely atomised bits of quartz everywhere is roughly equal to what you'd expect from a hand grenade. As such I refused to have one that was gas intact in the house.

I do have a couple of 200W SLI/H linear sodium lamps here too, which were a popular choice for runway lighting in years gone by apparently.

[CitroJim]

Who needs the sun when we have you Zel

Just arranging a proper and fitting home for a certain radiogram

Rain stops any Ka-pers today so it's time to play vintage electronics...

Photos soon

[CitroJim]

The radiogram works a treat Zel and has polished up a treat

It sounds utterly bloody awesome courtesy of those three speakers!

Here it is in pride of place

Own Work

The record deck is functional but badly needs a good service... The grease - as happens - has dried out...

I am delighted with it

[Hell Razor5543]

I wonder how hard it would be to take a feed from the guitar and play it through the radiogram? Valve driven amplifiers make such a nice warm noise!

[Hell Razor5543]

Only 200W...Amateur!

It was a surplus bulb from a lighthouse, and included a spare set of lenses!

[CitroJim]

I wonder how hard it would be to take a feed from the guitar and play it through the radiogram?

Easy, just plug it into the 'Gram' input - where the record deck plugs in normally...

Valve driven amplifiers make such a nice warm noise!

Look very carefully and a sharp eye will spot a Fender Champ amp behind the vintage Fender Strat... The Champ is all valves and sounds quite lovely...

You're right - solid-state amps just cannot match the sound of valves and even today valves still reign supreme in the music world and always will - All the clever modern electronics in the world just cannot replicate the sound of a good valve amp with proper spring reverb

[Zelandeth]

Agreed, hence the fact that a future mod for my Hammond will be a valve based pre-amp stage. Purely so it can be overdriven a bit and get such effects as necessary for tracks such as Born to be Wild or Gimme Some Lovin' which you just can't have without it...

Even have a control for it - there's a pointless percussion section, so plan is to steal the volume pot for that as the "drive" control.

[CitroJim]

Agreed, hence the fact that a future mod for my Hammond will be a valve based pre-amp stage.

All stages need to be valves Zel How much power do you want? I have a 6L6/EL34 amp that's gives about 30W you can have... It has a couple of ECC83/12AX7s in the pre-amp stages...

[Zelandeth]

It doesn't actually really need to have any appreciable gain - it will be there purely for the overdrive effect, the normal PA stage will still be doing the heavy lifting. It's a pretty well documented mod for the T-200 series organs, as it's all that's missing really. You've already got a proper tonewheel based generator and decent speakers (for all the purists knock them! ...Sorry, I can't justify spending ten grand on a B-3 Hammond and half that again for the full size Leslie speaker cabinet).