November 2011: The following pages detail the strip-down and rebuild of another R1155 ... In this case an ‘A’ variant with the later, ‘type 35’ tuning mechanism and belongs to a friend of mine. The acquisition and refurbishment of this set actually serves to highlight the difficulty in getting a complete R1155. I was initially presented with no less than three derelict 1155s and asked if I could make a complete one out of the three. The short answer was no! This one was eventually bought at a rally and on the face of it, looked largely intact. However, my friend had been unable to view the internals at time of purchace. The photograph above is a little misleading since it did come with a tuning indicator. When I took this photograph, just prior to stripping it down, I had already taken all the valves out for safe keeping.

What was immediately obvious was the lack of labels for ‘Meter Balance, the long triple label in the top right corner and those associated with the meter deflection switch, which itself was missing. I may be wrong, but I suspect the volume control knob is wrong too. The ‘Pencil Strip’ was missing, as were the two supports for the metal strap that retains the Jones connectors. Everything else on the front panel appeared to be in order. However, looks can be deceiving!  

As expected, ALL the DF circuitry was missing ... That is V1, V2, V9, the entire contents of the rear compartment in the BFO/DF unit, the 2 wave-wound inductors that comprise L24, the transformer known as L23, the DF tag-bard on one end of the coil-box, the three capacitors that are normally next to the bevel gears and associated with V9 and 3 of the iconic tall tubular metal-can capacitors. As previously mentioned S2 was also missing. Not only was the DF compartment empty, but it also had a huge hole punched in it. The Meter Balance and Meter Amplitude potentiometers turned out to be ‘space fillers’ and the unique dual-gang AF/RF gain potentiometer had been replaced with a single-gang potentiometer. I was going to have to do a lot of hunting for replacement parts before I started!