5 months ago the moon and stars aligned, which resulted in me walking past a Sansui 1000A on the curbside. 44 pounds of Japanese tube sound, out for the taking. 100 watts. People love to toss things away.
I have since gotten around to restoring it. One invaluable tool for the safe verification of antique and vintage audio equipment is the dim-bulb tester.
A dim-bulb tester is simply a light bulb wired in series between the Hot wire of your AC mains outlet and the equipment to be powered, e.g. a receiver or amplifier. It is effectively a current limiter. In the event of a short circuit, the bulb will shine bright instead of releasing magic smoke from your equipment. (more…)