Saturday, March 27, 2010

THE PROPER WIRE

One of the frustrating parts of repairing older appliances is finding the right wire, especially power cord. Old ones very rarely survive in safe shape; most new ones look plain wrong.

For power cords, Sundial Wire has the answer. You've seen their work and haven't noticed it, in films and TV shows. They have very old-fashioned twisted-pair power cord...that just happens to be hiding modern insulation under the cloth.

Wiring up a classic radio or a telephone? Building retrotech from scratch? Check out the "Wire" listings under "Components" at Radio Daze; they have solid and stranded cloth-covered hookup wire in several sizes and many colors, including "pushback" solid, plus multiconductor cable and tinsel cord for telephone handsets, headphones and old-fashioned speakers. They have their own line of parallel-wire cloth-covered power cord and matching plugs, too.

Antique Electronics Supply has cloth-covered magnet wire in #24 and #26 size, plus Litz wire and cloth-covered hookup wire assortments, some power cord, cloth-type "spaghetti" insulating sleeving and #12 square tinned busbar.

Not Esoteric enough? Try the all-cotton-insulated wire at Jupiter Condenser Co. --And if you just have to have waxed-paper condensers, why, Jupiter's your only source of new ones, as far as I know. (The latter are not inexpensive but feature manufacturing techniques far superior to the old type; they've a line of modern Mylar fixed condensers as well). I have not done business with this company -- but they look interesting.

(Also stumbled over general-line/audiophile supplier Parts Connection, worth adding to your do-they-have-it? resources).

7 comments:

  1. Insane pricing on those Jupiter caps, though. Most "audiophiles" have zero understanding of how things work, and price never seems to matter to them. I've seen old, *removed* Sprague "Black Beauty" caps for for over $60 on eBay!
    Looks like I'm going to stop throwing away my old parts!

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  2. Hey, one of these places (Antique Electronics Supply) is in my neck of the woods, er, desert. Gonna have to check this out -- thanks!!

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  3. AES is just about the gold standard for good tube/antique radio parts. They lean a little more to guitar amps these days but hey -- whatever keeps the doors open!

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  4. I know about AES, but not about the others, Thanks! I rebuild radios every once in a while along with Lionel train transformers, oh and phones...and .. I'll shut up now, you get the idea!

    Kelly

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  5. Always happy to hear of someone else making old stuff work!

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  6. Steampunk taxidermy:

    http://www.dyscario.com/design/steampunk-taxidermy-by-lisa-black.html

    enjoy!

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  7. Steampunk Bambi -- I'm freakin' out!

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