I got my T1154M from a friend who was keen for me to rebuild one of his three R1155s ... Or at least get one working one out of the three. He also had two, largely intact T1154Ms. I agreed to help him with his R1155, provided I got to keep one of the T1154s. That seemed a good deal to me!. Unfortunately it was not possible to do anything with the three R1155 chassis. He finally got a fourth one, albeit missing ALL the key DF components. It has taken me over a year to collect all the missing pieces, but hopefully it will not be another year before another R1155 is brought back to it’s original glory.

As for the two T1154Ms ... I felt it was only right to choose for myself the one which was least complete. Both the panel meters were missing as were all four of the valves. As can be seen from the photograph on the right, the paintwork was in a terrible state. The outside of the case looked as if it had been stored in a pool of water and such was the rust, it was some time before I was able to extract the chassis from the case! Quite a few of the Jones-plug pins had been soldered to and someone had previously made significant yet unfathomable modifications to the heater wiring. The valve socket for the modulator valve was shattered and the variometer had become separated from its spindle.

T1154M - before refurbishment

The first stage of any refurbishment process is always to remove and clean that which can be easily removed. In this case, all the knobs came off without too much difficulty. The coloured knobs appear to be some form of coloured Bakelite and clean up rather well. The cover plates over the Uni-Click mechanisms also come off easily. The panel for the meters comes off as does the panel behind the Master Switch. Both of these can be re-sprayed. Details of how this can be done giving it an almost authentic finish will be covered later. Since only one of the two transmitters had what I call a ‘front door’, I decided to make a second one. So pleased was I with my copy that I decided to keep it and moved the original onto the second transmitter. The one in the picture above is the original.

All four of the valves in the T1154 have the British B5 base as introduced in 1928. As can be seen, one of these, that of the modulator/side-tone valve was completely shattered. Curiously, Hi-Fi enthusiasts consider triode valves as the

ultimate in amplification. Consequentially it is possible to purchase modern ceramic B5 valve bases with gold-plated receptacles. Unfortunately, these modern bases are elliptical, not round as in the T1154. Therefore I simply glued the socket back together with epoxy resin  

B5 base - before removal

B5 base - once removed