Kia ora all,

Recently I came into the care of a de Vere 5180. It has seen better days as has been in storage, but things look good overall and after spending time calibrating it I reckon it'll be perfect.

However...

It's missing two crucial parts, and living in New Zealand it may prove difficult to get over this hurdle.

Firstly, the negative holder is broken and more crucially, it's missing the power control box – the former is small enough to perhaps source internationally, but the latter I understand as being rather massive and heavy – not to mention voltage differences.

I'm wondering if anyone out there could give me some advise as to where to look for these parts, or offer any kind of workaround for the control box or even schematics as to how to build one – I'm lucky to work in a university with an electrical engineering department that might be able to help for minimal $$$.

Basically, any advise would be awesome. It's tough in New Zealand, as this kind of equipment is super rare. What is left here, people hang on to and use. Or, worse case, people have long thrown out due to lack of people knowing the real world value of what they have.

Thanks in advance for any help people can offer!

Tim