Restorations

WELCOME! Remembering... More Stuff... Even more stuff Page Five Page Six Restorations Restorations Pt2 Turntables COLLINS 212E GATES Diplomat RCA 76B to 76D BE  console Harris 5 Ham Radio

I love consoles, they are probably what got me interested in broadcasting in the first place

Since I bought my first retired board ( A Federal in 1964) I have restored, demolished or somewhere in between - a console every year of my life. (Or so it seems). I am really bad to modify older consoles to make them more user friendly, this one was intact electrically, no extra holes in it, so I brought it back just like it left 123 Hampshire Street about 45 years ago.

GATESWAY 5133A and a RAYTHEON RC-11

This one I did not leave stock.  I bought two of these in a radio station storage room "everything goes" purchase. I decided to make one stereo for my needs.  I put OPAMP Labs works in it, and sold the tube guts on Ebay to finance the project.

GATES 52CS / STUDIOETTE

The second model of the famed Gates STUDIOETTE, (the first was a rack cabinet model) this 52CS had been scratched up pretty bad.  I repainted it, cleaned up the knobs and plates, added two more mixers (where the Monitor & Program gain pots had been) and rescaled the VU meter (it had faded badly).  I did this one for customer in Florida who used to work with one way back when.

The original cart machine

The original device was built in Bloomington Il by a couple of radio station engineers.  Man, what they started.

In a room full of stuff I bought, there were a pile of these, so I thought I would bring one back to life.  Drive belts are getting hard to come by...

My home made console

This was my personal custom console made from RCA parts and a one-off cabinet.  The silver panel is the lower half of an RCA BC-7 flipped over, and I added two Simpson Wide Vue meters where the cue speaker should be. Once again OPAMP Labs amplifiers.

Is it junk or priceless?

This is what the board at the top of the page looked like on day one. Oh well....

Gotta start somewhere...