One of the best looking sets I have seen and also one of the rarest is my Lissen Skyscraper 3. It was given to me by a friend at work, he apparently found it by a dustbin waiting to be thrown out! It was in a terrible state, it was covered completely with ashes and the cabinet had been painted with dark brown gloss paint. From the state of it I nearly threw it back in the bin!
But when I saw the shape of the cabinet, and the the protractor-like dials I was hooked! I just knew that this was the set for me. The chassis was in a terrible state and I thought that it was completely corroded. I was fortunate, it was just covered in a thick coating of ash, after cleaning this off with the vacuum cleaner I dismantled the chassis and took copious notes and drawings of the components and wiring.
The aluminium chassis responded well to cleaning with soft soap and warm water, and the brass fittings were cleaned with Cola - yes Cola! It is quite acidic and cleans up copper and brass items well. Try a test piece first to see if it is suitable, and remember not to leave them soaking too long!! Amazingly people actually drink this stuff!! I also tried an ultrasonic bath with varying degrees of success, I don't think there is really a substitute for soft soap, a stiff brush and elbow grease!
The set was missing it's front panel and knobs, but fortunately Steve Harris (Chester Broadcasting Museum) had a spare chassis tucked away and after a quick trip to Chester I was the proud owner of another more complete chassis, including the original bakelite dial and knobs! After just a weekend's work the chassis and wiring were restored. The wooden cabinet looked very miserable and scratched, but fortunately it had been painted with brown gloss paint and all the scratches were in the surface of this.
I set to, armed with plastic gloves, goggles, Nitromors (original) and a scraper! After a short while I could see the real beauty of the walnut veneer hidden for all this time. Even though I say it myself the cabinet came up beautifully. It didn't take long to get all the paint off and out of all the grooves. I then stained the now bleached wood and finally put on a few coats of dark coloured bees wax polish.
The next stage was to get it all working again, there isn't really all that much to the circuit! I got a photocopy of the original assembly instructions from Tudor Gwilliam-Rees and this helped put right some of the "modifications" that had occurred in the last 60 years! I managed to locate some valves from Jim Fish at Wilson Valves including an original Lissen output valve. Afterwards I managed to salvage two of the original Lissen valves using super glue on the bases. This gave a complete line up of working Lissen valves. Steve managed to find an Ekco mains HT eliminator for me and after bringing it up to modern electrical standards (ie getting rid of the rubber insulation and earthing the metal case!) I was ready to try it out. For the LT battery I used an RS components Cyclon battery (591-629) and the original Grid Bias battery!! - this was looking a bit tatty after all these years but still had 1.5 volts on all the cells. The original four pole balanced armature loudspeaker was missing, so I used a Celestion high impedance speaker. I switched it on and to my amazement it came on immediately at blasting volume. The quality of sound is certainly not Hi-Fi but has solid, rich tone. The selectivity is pretty poor for today's crowded Medium Wave band, but with a little patientience most stations could be tuned in with only a trace of adjacent channel interference. The set is virtually complete now and I only need to restore/replace the front painted panel and find a loudspeaker. It was sold as a kit in 1931 and was almost guaranteed to work given the quality of the components and the easy to follow (full size scale!) plans. If anyone has a loudspeaker or any further information on this kit I would be pleased to hear! p.foden@ukonline.co.uk The before and after photographs of the chassis can be seen here
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