Bought me an Ebay special, HP Audio Signal generator manufactured around 1957. Let's tear into this old girl and see if it's feasible to restore or did I make an $80 mistake?
Looking at things at 20:24, between that crumbling wire insulation, and the soot/scorching on the bottom of that chassis, that poor thing had a tough life. It probably had a previous failure, repaired or not, that caused way too much current to be passed around on components (silicone wire insulation may not have as high a volt rating as PVC, but it takes long term heating much better, and I found it inside a lot of telecom equipment that I did open up) that went on for a long time, and or ended up with the damage that caused the brown sooty spot. It's always good to take a look into, document and share the info on old stuff like this, thank you for putting out the effort
This thing looks like it was a bench warrior, so it was probably left on for years. I haven't powered it up with the rectifier in it yet, but I will when I get to it and see how it reacts then go from there. I did see a few bumble bee caps in there which are questionable these days. Thanks for watching, more to come.
