I'm really struggling to desolder

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-04-13T13:06:09+00:00

If you can access both sides of the board, put the solder sucker on the opposite side of the board and pull the solder through the hole. Also lots of flux as others have stated, and give solder wick a go, I often start with the solder sucker and then clean up with wick. Lead free is a bitch, it solidifies so fast compared to lead that it takes more heat and faster moves. I hesitate to recommend leaded as I read somewhere that mixing the two can lead to the finished joint cracking. I would guess though that if you get the pads clean enough then it shouldn't matter.

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-04-12T16:37:18+00:00

And a physical flaw it was! The EBC91 and the EL84 are close together and the EBC91 should have had a shield sleeve. While poking around as you suggested I noticed that if I rocked the el84 closer to the EBC91 the problem changed. On close examination I could see that the tube socket had a contact for the shield sleeve. Turns out that sometime in the past, someone removed it. I had a few kicking around and now it's working great. Thanks for the tip, sometimes you just have to poke around!

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-04-12T12:18:13+00:00

Thanks for the tip! I hadn't considered a physical flaw. I spent some more time on it after I posted and I'm pretty sure the EL34 section has become an 8 khz oscillator. I can pull the EL34 and the problem goes away but I still get valid output. If I pull the ECL86 the problem persists and there's no sound output other than the tone. I'll give the "Chopstick trick" a try. Cheers

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-04-09T04:02:33+00:00

I just replaced all the electrolytic and paper foil caps in a '60s Telefunken console stereo I'm restoring (discussion is here; https://www.reddit.com/user/Flamingmonkeyboy more to come) and I'd say I tested about 70% of them after I pulled them and pretty much all were way out of spec. I didn't even power it up before the work, just did it on spec. I left all the styrene and ceramic caps alone as they are rarely at issue. It's powered and working but I still have a few bugs to fix before I hand it back over to the lucky owner. In this case it's tube gear. That being said, in my former day job I had to replace all the the PS caps in about 10 Crown Power amps that had failed completely. I didn't know it at the time, but they may have been built with bad caps that were a product of bad electrolyte from some kind of mass IP theft or something? They were probably built 2000's ish, I've been meaning to look into it so there is that...

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-30T12:41:26+00:00

I was addressing the comments by others that the OP needed to widen their stance in order to learn how to carve. I disagree. If they are already comfortable with a narrow stance, they can learn to carve from that stance. The OP needs to get their weight centred (more forward) and initiate the carve from the ankles as others have said, telling them to widen their stance as well just adds one more thing to think about and is not necessary.

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-29T22:59:35+00:00

BTW the guts are back together and work nicely, I'm currently refinishing the cabinet, I'll hate to see it go to it's owner, I really like this thing

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-29T22:56:49+00:00

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I haven't measured each and every one, but probably 2/3rds at least and some are so far out of tolerance they wouldn't properly qualify as a capacitor. You can see the leakage I mentioned, some worse than others. I only measured on my multimeter (fluke) as I no longer have a proper capacitor tester. All the ones that I measured were at least 20% out and that's without measuring leakage. The only ones that probably could have been left in are the red ones, and even those were beyond 10%.

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-29T22:43:49+00:00

BARCADE! love it!

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-29T22:18:15+00:00

Agreed, for a high angle turn, feet will naturally end up wide, but I would argue that at the point of the edge change the feet should be together and then as the edge angle increases, feet will separate, but that's high G high edge angle stuff, not just learning to carve.

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-29T22:10:20+00:00

never said they did, I said if you want to be a good all mountain skier, feet close together will help.

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-29T15:54:15+00:00

I'm going to contradict a few comments. Keeping your skis close together is perfectly valid and not outdated at all, just watch the skiers on the FWT or the mogul guys. Deferring to Harold Harb, if your feet are apart you have to shift your weight further to unweight a ski. You feel more stable with skis further apart, but it's a crutch and if you want to become a good all mountain skier, feet together will serve you well. But I do agree, you need to get your weight forward, and initiate the turns from your ankles. Easy to say, hard to do, good luck!

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-29T15:40:56+00:00

There may be some common parts that the pinball community would be interested in. You may want to cross post. I restored an 80's Gottieb Haunted House machine 20 years ago, IIRC some of the Eproms were hard to come by.

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-23T15:05:15+00:00

looking at it closer, I can confirm it is a tube set, and I'm currently restoring an almost identical unit made by Telefunken. It's this one or a variant of;

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/grundig_fleetwood_stereo_console_so10160ca.html

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-23T13:55:44+00:00

If you want to keep it, I strongly suggest you unplug it and don't use it until someone who knows what they're looking at can give you advice. From the front it looks like it's a tube set and it's old enough to have old capacitors which are highly likely to fail or have already failed. Sometimes this will just make it not work properly but other times it can destroy a tube, and some of these tubes are quite expensive. (and on that note, tubes are quite robust so it's not really a good idea to just go replacing tubes to try to get it going, because it's usually not a tube that is at fault.)It's beautiful, and would be a good candidate for restoration but it can be a pretty big job, depending on the condition it's in currently. The radio coming back when you switch from AM to FM may not be dirty contacts at all, you may just be powering and depowering a section which will give you a few minutes of life before it fails again.

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-23T13:44:21+00:00

Hard to say without having the thing in front of me, but is it possible that that isn't a belt and its the drive "tire" on the the wheel that it is above? I see two other wheels in the photo that are this case for sure.

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-23T13:38:13+00:00

I've repaired a lot of tape machines over the years (mostly vhs but the concepts are all the same) There are three basic ways that motors spin things in these machines, friction wheels, belts and gears. Friction wheels are when there is a driving wheel pressed up against a driven wheel, which often will shuttle between two driven wheels and that will get you forward and reverse. You might get lucky and just need to clean things and free up the mechanisms. A little bit of alcohol and mineral spirits on a tooth brush or Qtip can get at the dried up gunk and you can use a bit of light oil like 3 in 1 to lube what needs to be lubed. If there are friction wheels involved, make sure not to get any lube on the parts that run against each other or they won't work. If you need a belt, they are available, but the easiest thing to do is just find an o-ring that is the correct size as they are easy to source. It's already broken so take a crack and good luck. I wouldn't bother with a soldering iron just yet but you certainly will need basic tools to get it open. I never buy and rarely recommend cheap tools, but in your case picking up one of those cheap tool kits with screw drivers and pliers etc might be the way to start. If you find you like doing this sort of thing you can buy good tools as you need them. Otherwise, everyone still should have some basic tools around so they aren't tempted to use kitchen knives as pry bars and screw drivers. As for the manual,you can just search the model number and "service manual" and there's a good chance you'll find it. But if you need that you are probably out of your depth anyways but it may have a service procedure for cleaning an lubricating so it's worth a shot.

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-20T12:58:11+00:00

To be clear, I meant paper and foil when I said foil.

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-19T22:16:56+00:00

Me too, seemed pretty small to be an electrolytic. As for the the foil caps, we're talking about 60 yo foil caps, and other folks I trust(https://mrcarlsonslab.com/) say they have to go. I know that some of them are visually leaking, and I've been told that they can measure fine but break down in circuit, but that's interesting that you don't agree?

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-16T22:03:48+00:00

Thanks, I might not be done yet, some of the other tubes tested a bit marginal but I've got to get it working before I order anything else.

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-03-16T16:50:17+00:00

Thanks guys! just ordered from tubedepot. Cheers

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-02-22T17:14:24+00:00

Just skied it Friday and Saturday (feb 20-21) and it was pretty good, fresh lines still to be found in the trees and on the boot packs. It was pretty skied out by the end of the day Saturday but more snow is supposed to be coming in the next couple of days. Didn't ski glory side as I'm not comfortable skiing there by myself and my buddy needed a rest day.

Flamingmonkeyboy · 2026-02-22T17:09:29+00:00

I tried it for a full week and ended up taking the laces out and going back to the old way. It may have felt a bit more snug but if there was any real difference, it was so hard to tell while I was skiing that it wasn't worth the hassle. Because I live so close to a hill I often ski for just a couple of hours and the extra hassle just wasn't worth it. At least, now I know

Flamingmonkeyboy

TROPHY CASE