I've had this 1948 Monitor Crystaliner for a long time. I've always been wary of it since it was designed with a resistance cord. The resistance cord (or curtain burner as it is called) has a piece of nichrome wire wound around the hot lead to drop about 100 volts so that the 4 filaments of the 6J5 tubes can be powered in series. Of course the cord was damaged and was no longer safe. The man that I got it from just put a rubber tube over the whole cord. I imagine he used it that way, but I wasn't that daring.
It is a relatively crude instrument but in its way a rather elegant design.
Today I decided to make it operate. The main filter capacitors had to be replaced. They were both faulty. The hard part was replacing the resistance cord with a filament transformer. I reasoned that the 6J5 tubes would work just as well on 6 volts as on 6.3 volt filament voltage. There is just enough room to put a transformer on the top part of the chassis.
It was a nice little project for an afternoon. The Monitor Crystaliner is designed to produce harmonics from its crystals as well as fundamental frequencies. The original instructions were something I had, but I had to research the schematic.
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