Ducati, but is it a restoration?

[boater sam]

Mend it Mark,  a handy guy but not one I would like to restore a radiogram for me! Certainly not a rare 1940s Ducati which deserves to be preserved.

  Its here   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbNBGVW1n0Y 

His "blobby" soldering technique appals me as a purist and soldering with valves still in the connecter is a recipe for disaster.
He obviously has never seen "cheat" twisted wire capacitors before.

Replacing the original capacitors but not saving the paper labels is a shame, it would be so much better with restuffed capacitors or at least disguised to look original.

He seems not to understand how IF transformers work either.

Perhaps I am too much a perfectionist but to me it is a mess, certainly not restored, more like ruined.

Part 2 is the speaker repair and horror of horrors, Bluetooth installed.  When I have recovered a bit  I may watch that from behind the sofa in case it becomes too scary.

[joebog1]

Gotta have blue tooth Sam.
Unless I get to him first and he wont have teeth :-D.

My soldering is something I am proud of, although SOME components take a LOT of massaging to get solder to take. ( modern bits )
Perhaps oxy/acetylene is what the manufacturer had in mind.

TIG !!!. I didnt think of tig.

Joe

[boater sam]

Having been trained to wire to Admiralty standards with all wires mechanically anchored before soldering and all looms laced I am a bit fussy about wiring assemblies.

I still have problems understanding how dead bug assembly of surface components onto pcbs can be considered reliable. I suppose its because nothing weighs anything these days.

Strange that the old radio factories still wrapped wires onto tags rather than just sticking them on with solder even when they had to make economies after the war. They must of had good reason.

I watched the second part about rebuilding the mains energised speaker. It was less horrendous than part one. He managed to glue up the splits in the cone quite well with coffee filter paper which I thought to be too stiff having always used tissue paper and was lucky enough to centralise the cone without shims on assembly. Again his soldering onto the output transformer terminals was diabolical.

I cannot comment on the Bluetooth having no experience of such wizardry but it seemed to work. A shame that he didn't get the radio to work better but perhaps with what he did by way of renovation he was lucky that it worked at all.

[BusyBee]

I watched some of it. He is not really a restorer and does appear to have more of a 'gung ho' attitude to repairs than is really wanted for restoration. I did find that kind of approach good though when I was learning how to solder surface mount components. Slow and steady does not go well with those. The modern approach? I suppose, for him and his client, it's just the external views which are important so it's maybe a good thing that he is not just swopping over the chassis for something modern.

I am not that much of a restorer either but I would have thought the first thing to do would have been lots of photographs so that any alteration can be recorded and things put back if needed. He dd get to the photo though so I presume it's just something not in the video (and he has that anyway).

Tracy

[boater sam]

From some of his other videos he uses his mobile phone extensively before he starts.
He has an annoying habit of just scattering screws and washers onto the bench, its a wonder they all go back in the correct places.
He has some nice kit in that shop, thermal camera, ultrasonic bath, desolder gun, machine tools, hot air etc.

He terrified me when he removed and replaced a HMV windup spring, but he still has all his fingers.
He is a solid state guy at heart, very little experience with valves I suspect.

Good videos though with his auto focus camera..

[bobhowe]

Hi Sam only watched the first part that was enough for me when he desolderd the cables from the speaker output transformer not taking care what damage he could do and what is this all about poking about with the components ?I have seen this a lot on YouTube not just his Videos 73 Bob

[PerdioPal]

"Strange that the old radio factories still wrapped wires onto tags rather than just sticking them on with solder even when they had to make economies after the war. They must of had good reason."
Is that so a few people could wire up the components and then have one soldering them all up later after inspection?