Kolster Brandes “Rejectostat” model 666, 1933

A fine Kolster Brandes Rejectostat model 666, 1933

I forgot about this set that I restored in the early ‘90s. I recall buying at as a part of a job lot from a chap in Barnet.

When I got this onto the bench, it was obvious that the rectifier valve had lived a hard life and the set had been suffering with a serious case of capacitoritus. All the paper capdensors were changed as all were leaky in varying degrees. Once done, we had a look at the resistors. Most of these, carbon types, were all more or less reading what they should be. Trying to keep the set as original as possible, they were left in peace. With some nice new electrolytics in place power was applied. Dial light lit up the tuning dial, a nice drum labeled in Mtrs and stations. Always a bit worried with sets that have engerised loudspeakers, as the field coil (part of the HT smoothing circuit and magnetisng the pole piece), can be prone to going open circuit. When this happens, you end up with no HT. You can replace the loudspeaker with a permanent magnet type and add a choke in the HT feed. Anyway, no problems here. Within about 10 seconds, the set was singing happily. I tiny bit of alignment (I.F. is 130Khz in this set) and the tuning dial drum adjusted to show the correct readings, the wireless was raised to “good job done” status.  It’s a 6 valve set including rectifier and has a limiter cct to try and reject static click and pops caused by lightning, car ignition and Trams (those things to mass transport poor people to and from work).

Well, shipped the set to Spain with me when moving here and not touched it for some 15 years. Powered it up for the first time since then and with 3 foot of wire connected to the antenna socket, set worked really well.

Apart from capacitors, we have a set that is original, all valves fitted as they were in Foots Cray In kent, 87 years ago. Testament to valve manufacturing, glass production, pinching off wires etc.. You won’t see a Chinese made EL34 owning it’s own vacuum in 80 years from now.