Acquired this set on Ebay for a very good price. Cost more in shipping. Have a soft spot for these Marconi sets, as long as they don’t have the potted capacitor block, where you have to dig out 12 tons of tar. This set however is all point to point wired, so my happiness level was raised by 3 dbH. Really did not expect it to survive the trip, but having been well packed, no damage done. I wanted to see if she could be got up and running without too much work, so that I could evaluate what a full restore would take. A few capacitors and the usual on-off switch was missing, someone having drilled a hole in the side of the cabinet to put a toggle in place. Ummm. A contract has been put out to try and find the person who did that. I will fit toggle switch in his side. Valves looked all to be original. Main problem was the tuning gang condenser was flopping about as the rubber bushes had crumbled away years ago. Robbed some bushes from a CD mechanism. made for the job. Slow power up and the set worked well, even the magic eye worked,
amazing.
Quite often, you find that these speakers fall to bits, but here, all seemed well. It is an energised speaker, so I always get worried if the field coil is in tact. Plenty of volume and nice and sensitive, short wire antenna, amazed what what was being collected from the ether.
