The scary part is the 1960-1970’s electronics why I use a DeVere 5108. Much simpler to fix when it breaks!!
The scary part is the 1960-1970’s electronics why I use a DeVere 5108. Much simpler to fix when it breaks!!
There's noting "complicated" about Durst, Neil. They did offer a lot of options, including carriers, which spells out versatility and specificity rather than complication, although I will admit that, given all the odds and ends that turn up these days disconnected from one another, it can seem confusing at times to anyone new to Durst.
And yes I know about, and even visited the late rip-off artist in Hillsboro. He was an excellent machinist and knew his stuff, but deserved a D- on the Business Ethics line of his report card. It wasn't a "graveyard" at all initially. He imported and sold many dozens of brand new commercial enlargers. A single clean carrier for any one of them might rightfully fetch more money than an entire Zone Six rig with all the trimming, because way more went behind it in terms of actual die-casting and precision machining. It would simply be impossible to make things that way again from the standpoint of labor cost alone. Now everything is about anodized aluminum and CNC fabrication instead. But unless an Al Queda bomber has been in your darkroom, any commercial Durst was precision designed in the first place to be maintained or refurbished seemingly forever.
Old electronics are no big deal. I simply bypassed them and rewired several big Durst enlargers using little more than a cheap continuity tester and
basic cheap voltmeter. Ordinary heat-resistant truck wire worked just fine inside the colorheads; for everything else, if needed, a no-brainer. I don't
even claim to understand electronics per se. But I do know how to rewire a lamp, and this is pretty analogous if one slows down and thinks about it.
But just like Tax888, I did reserve one of my L138 chassis for sake of conversion into accepting an oversize Aristo cold light fo 8x10 film. And for 8x10 color printing, I have a Durst L184 plus my own much larger custom 8x10 color enlarger.
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