SBE Console II necromancy

[TM86]

Depending on the colors of the meter, and the colors of the led, it might wash out certain colors. It's a cool idea! Be really easy to tell what mode your in that way!!
Depending on how you are switching the led, it might be possible to run 3 different leds that wouldn't interfere with the meter colors...

Looking at it a bit more, I think controlling the brightness of the light source will be what makes the biggest difference. The way the current non-functioning bulb is mounted it points away from the meter.

I ordered a big bag of cheap RGB LEDs to play with off of Amazon for under 10 bucks. Which will give me more than a few chances to screw this up and still be able to get the effect I'm after.

 

[TM86]

RGB LED's came in today after several unexplained shipping delays. Now the channel selector backlight shows green in AM, yellow in USB, and red in LSB. It's a silly mod, but I like the little splash of color in a faceplate that really doesn't have much.

Does make channel 9 look a little weird, though.

Safety caps showed up as well, so the AC side of the power supply is complete.

Rubber grommets are due in tomorrow. Once those show up I'll have to stop vacillating between grain of wheat bulbs for the meter or go with LED's across the board. I really like that the "ON THE AIR" window glows brighter when you modulate, and I may lose that by switching to LED's unless I can think of a way to emulate that behavior.

 

[walterjn]

RGB LED's came in today after several unexplained shipping delays. Now the channel selector backlight shows green in AM, yellow in USB, and red in LSB. It's a silly mod, but I like the little splash of color in a faceplate that really doesn't have much.

Does make channel 9 look a little weird, though.

Safety caps showed up as well, so the AC side of the power supply is complete.

Rubber grommets are due in tomorrow. Once those show up I'll have to stop vacillating between grain of wheat bulbs for the meter or go with LED's across the board. I really like that the "ON THE AIR" window glows brighter when you modulate, and I may lose that by switching to LED's unless I can think of a way to emulate that behavior.

Any chance you can post pics of the leds? I think that's a cool mod.

 

[TM86]

The diode itself is a cheap RGB diode. Yellow is a bit more greenish than I'd like, may have to play with resistor values a bit more.

But it looks OK in the radio.

I used two diodes I had laying around to make an OR gate feeding green. This is because while USB has it's own unique point to grab a voltage, LSB does not since it's tied to AM or USB, depending on which segment of the mode switch you choose. Which means yellow here is just red and green turned on at the same time.

It's a bit of a hack, since I didn't so much design it as start soldering and then thought about what I was trying to accomplish. Really should have thought about it more, but too late now.

 

[guitar_199]

You are surely tempting me to get my Console V finished............

 

[TM86]

You are surely tempting me to get my Console V finished............

Go for it! They're not that hard to work on, even though the board feedthroughs can be a pain in the ass. I've got two of them, that's how much I like them. Not like the Robyn SB-510D's where I got a second one because I forgot I had the first one.

 

[walterjn]

The diode itself is a cheap RGB diode. Yellow is a bit more greenish than I'd like, may have to play with resistor values a bit more.
View attachment 65152View attachment 65153View attachment 65154
But it looks OK in the radio.
View attachment 65155View attachment 65156View attachment 65157
I used two diodes I had laying around to make an OR gate feeding green. This is because while USB has it's own unique point to grab a voltage, LSB does not since it's tied to AM or USB, depending on which segment of the mode switch you choose. Which means yellow here is just red and green turned on at the same time.

It's a bit of a hack, since I didn't so much design it as start soldering and then thought about what I was trying to accomplish. Really should have thought about it more, but too late now.

Looks great!!

 

[TM86]

Looks great!!

Thanks!

Grommets came in today, so I mounted the LED in one of those. The grommet holds the LED a little further away than I had it when I took those pics, and the extra distance softened the color a bit at the front panel.

Bought some grain of wheat bulbs on fleaBay for the meter and "ON THE AIR" lights. Meter definitely needs them, and I'll replace the others because they're glued to their grommets and the 1974 rubber on those ain't lookin' so good. Closest I could find to the originals are 4mm bulbs, so I may end up having to glue those to some new grommets, perpetuating the problem for another 49 years.

Mouser is now telling me the backordered caps aren't going to be here until November. This project may go on hold for a while because of that. I'll simply have run out of things to work on inside the radio and I won't try to align it until those powdered sugar looking micas get swapped out.

I did contact the seller on this one. In the original listing he mentioned it had been his Dad's radio and they didn't know why it quit. I let him know it's working again and his "parts only" listing wasn't quite correct anymore. He seemed happy about that.

 

[TM86]

The 11.750 MHz crystal showed up today, which is nice since the shipper said it wouldn't be here until next month. Popped it into the socket and my missing channels are back.

Grain of wheat bulbs showed up as well. Since the new ones are slightly smaller than the originals I thought I'd have to glue them in place. Instead figured out that two layers of heatshrink around the base would fatten them up. They are now sitting in place and are working as they should.

Still waiting on backordered parts, but I don't think I'll have much more to say on this one when they show up as it will be swap parts and do an alignment.

Sorry this was so boring. I really thought this one would be a hard case, what with the blown up parts and all. Instead it was just swap and check to see what started working.

Just proves you never know what you're getting off fleaBay.

 

[TM86]

Last update on this one. The backordered mica caps finally showed up. I swapped out the powdered sugar looking caps and did a few tests, all is still working despite my soldering. This one is finally complete!