Would love to see more restoration videos of this. This thing is amazing

5:56 - Literally "wearing a wire"!

Fantastic! I wonder what else do you have in the vault...

"Fran, your mission, if you decide to accept it, is to rebuild this Minifon tape recorder, making it faster, stronger, better..... this spool of wire will self destruct in 5 seconds". A conflation of two TV show opening themes, obviously! Or perhaps re-using the same spool of wire to record both shows, except that the bias oscillator isn't fully erasing the original audio as the second TV show audio is overlaid on it. Is print- through more of a problem with a wire recorder, or less of a problem, compared to actual recording tape? I realize I am showing my age by actually knowing what print- through is...

Oo! Techmoan is so going to want to get his hands on that! 8o)

so - the big question is - what's on the wire?

Thank you so much for sharing this Fran !!

2:36 Translation of the manual in German: "10 simple hints for the correct handeling of the Minifon P55 "S" and "L" 1) Install the batteries in the correct manner i.e. + on + y - on - 2) Check the motor battery meter - the indicator must be in the white field. If the playback volume is to low, replace the anode and fillament battery. 3) Insert all plugs completly into the sockets until the end. 4) Check the adjustment of the potentiometer (keep in mind the distance) 5) Use the right accessory for the intended purpose - e.g. (neck/throat microphone when dictating in the car) 6) When changing the reels make sure that the recording "speaking" head is in its uppermost position. 7) Put the recording wire reels on until they latch, make sure that the wire runs through the recording head's slot 8) Work only with the minifon when the lid is closed. Don't touch the rotating reels or the recording ("speaking") head 9) Press buttons quick and firmly until they latch. When rewinding, if the red light shines, press stop button immediately 10) *For the sake of optimal recording and play back quality use minifon original accessories and sealed minifone recording reels.* Beautiful 1950ies wording. Written by the engineers themselves - no marketing speak - except in the last line.

Holy cow that is one awesome artwork.. A piece of wire can’t wait to see you get it going fully restored

*That's what makes franlab unique on youtube* ❤❤❤

*[Techmoan wants to know your location]*

Incredible engineering... it's beautiful

It's so great to have Fran back taking apart some antique audio equipment... Yeah!

OMG this is the most impressive piece of electronic equipment I've ever seen for it's time period

Amazing piece of history, and amazing video quality! Congratulations on the new lab!!

That's so cool. You're amazing at what you do. Thank you for posting this one. Hopefully you'll have an updated version of this working someday. Take care.

*When you get it going can you play whats recorded on the wire? I always wonder what is on those*

Wow...what an interesting piece of history you have there Fran. Thanks very much for showing us this.

Fran, in case you have to repeat such an actions with lots of screws, use my trick: (i) Place the plate with all these screw heads upside down onto a scanner and scan it. (ii) Print, cut and glue the image onto a foam plate of same size (thickness > expected screw length). (iii) Drill small holes into foam at screw positions. (iv) Start disassembling your item and stick screws at corresponding location in the image-on-foam, screw by screw. By these means you will never mix up screws while re-assembling your item !

WOW Fran, I'm impressed with that recorder for sure. Ahead of it's time for late 50's,lol. Thanks for the Vid

Thank you for a fascinating presentation. And congratulations on getting Franlab back in business.

By now you've probably seen the other tube hiding underneath. Regarding those ratchets, they're likely used for pre-tensioning springs and then glued down when the desired pre-tension is achieved. If you have to undo them, try to gauge how much energy is stored in them for future reference. The construction has a lot in common with German made clocks of that era.

When I was a kid in the early sixties I took apart one of my Grandad's old Medresco hearing aids. It had three tiny valves in it. It had a huge 1.5 V battery and a 22.5 V one in a big pouch which you kept in your pocket connected to the main unit which was clipped to your clothes with another lead going to an earpiece. I made a headphone amplifier with it. As far as I can remember the 22.5V battery lasted quite a while but the 1.5V one had to be replaced every few days. Compare this to my hearing aids that use a tiny zinc-air cell that lasts nearly a week!

Thanks for sharing this! Lovely piece of equipment!

I'm loving your 60's analog equipment on your bench. My dad's bench looked like that when I was growing up. Course, he wouldn't teach his little girl about much of it. He did show me how to sort resistors for him. Bad Boys, etc. Love your channel!

I would've messed up the wire with that tangle for sure. Nice demonstration of care and patience. I was given several working adding machines from the 40-50s when I was a kid. I kinda regret tearing them down for parts, now that I have some appreciation for this stuff. :/

Wow Fran, what an incredible piece of miniaturisation. Must have been assembled by watchmakers. So great to see such engineering. Looking forward to next installment.

That was definitely one of the cooler items I've seen you showcase in awhile. Very, very cool!!

Those caps might still work, test them. I'm using a century old one in my car. I love how the people of the early 1950s still had so much detail in their work. As for the drive belt maybe you could cut and sand some old tire tube & lap joint it around the large drum until the vulcanizing sets.

Brilliant Fran. I love examples of great design and engineering like this. Always love your videos 😊

Hi Fran, really great Vid! If you sometime want to make that thing function, please take care of this "Mylar"-Cap. This is not a Mylar, it's a Paper-Cap, called ERO 100 and these are notorious for badly leaking after all these years. Here in Germany we call these often "Zahnpasta-Kondensatoren" ("Toothpaste-Caps") cause of the whitish-brittle sealing compound. But there should be some more electronics hidden somewhere. The P55 has 3 Tubes (DF67, DF67, DL67). The original price for the P55 in 1955 was 730DM -or roughly estimated around 3000...3500$ today...

Thanks for brought this out,nice. There's always something new to know out there.

Hey Fran, I just found your channel tonight through this video and wanted to say Howdy as well as to validate you in your delivery and your communication. You're not only clear spoken but you engage we the audience in a conversational manner that not everybody does on KZfaq, as well as you. I look forward to exploring your channel further and I'll certainly subscribe :-)

Thankyou Fran, for an amazing tech history lesson. The sensor & tube detail mind blowing. In awe as ever.

Very nice speciment,it always amazes me that so much work went into developing all its parts and design.

Thoroughly enjoyed seeing such an amazing piece of technology enhanced only by having you describe it too us with your voice. So glad to see the lab again and of course you and most happily glad to see things are going better for you now I'd be lost without your videos 😀

Just came across your video/channel today. Very cool. Nice! Love these old gadgets and you are very nice presenting them. Keep it up! I have enjoyed.

You never cease to amaze me with the relics of days gone by that you present. Thanks Fran for all the work you put into your videos.

Wow Fran, what a fantastic little machine. And how wonderful to see you firing on all cylinders again!

Now that is an amazing piece of tech. I’d like to see more of that!!!! I hope you get it working and show us all

Fran is pretty amazing too .

One of your best Fran, thanks

That was awesome, thanks Fran.

Years ago I used to buy a lot of government surplus items. I thought of advertising as "Yesterday's Technology, Today!". I was a caretaker in the graveyard of technology. You have an amazing collection of old electronics.

Crazy Glue (Cyanoacrylate) will glue belts together (works for old VCRs, Turntables etc)so make the belt whatever length you need right on the recorder without taking it apart.

Techmoan and his sentient puppet army has you surrounded... Give it to them or be overwhelmed

My dad had one of the larger wire recorders when I was 16 I found it that was like 1969. I got the thing to work after repairing it.

From one technician to another. Very well presented. Good camera work.

The green battery padding is identical with the stuff you used to find on old Ping Pong paddles. That's a neat thing.

Yessss! Classic Fran video with vintage tech. What a magnificent piece of tech!

Oh my, this is the good stuff! Thank you for showing it to the world!

That is such a cool piece of history you have there.

It is very elegant design. It is beautiful, thank you for sharing this

When you removed that spanner screw from the back - you voided your warranty... DUH-DA-DUH!!

That explains the baggy clothes back in the 50's, to conceal all that - high tech!!

Very cool first tear down in the new lab!

What a beautiful machine. This was fascinating. Thanks, Fran!

22:06 - I see what appears to be another tube, bottom center of the screen, perpendicular to the drive motor.

At about 9:00 in, reminds me of un- snarling an open-face spinning reel when teaching little kids how to cast and fish. When I was older we would sometimes troll in the ocean with springy Wireline, designed to take the fishing lures down deep and have minimal water resistance , but if you snarled that spool of wire (from too much back pressure on the spool with your thumb as you were letting the line out) you might never get it untangled without putting kinks in it and ruining the wire. My grandfather got me into fishing, starting at age 5. An excellent introduction into the philosophy of patience, useful later in life when attempting to repair small gadgets such as this one.

So beautiful. Ah ... The device is also beautiful. ❤️❤️❤️

Holy crap! As an mech engineer, this is so cool. Hopefully you can restore it. Would love to see it operating

Brings some memories! I demonstrated one as an educational student lecture to my classmates some time around 1957. I recorded a few seconds of the teacher’s voice before it was my time to give my presentation and then played it back at the beginning of my speech. Amazing!

Thanks Fran, that is so cool to see wish you could do a restoration on that, and so nice to see you back at it, need more from the vault ...Congrats on the new lab

So cool, some of tech you feature I’ve never even heard of before 😍

Awesome, Fran!

Very nice! Thanks Fran.

Wow Fran thanks for showing us that 😊

This was so interesting Fran... that is an absolutely remarkable piece of equipment. I’d love to see it work! 😊 Thank you so much for posting!

Great to see you back in the lab with another technical / teardown video. I need one of those 2 prong "spanners" in my life. What a wonderful well-crafted machine that recorder is. Hope you can get it working again. I have never seen a square tube ( valve here in the UK ) either.

What an amazingly neat workplace!

That is astonishing! Love to see it going again.

Thanks for showing us this Fran. Staggering engineering.

Very well made! At 21:04 you can see another tube left of the motor in parallel with the yellow wire. The big capacitor with the red mark is an old ERO brand (AFAIK, they don't exist any more). Obviously a foil capacitor. And the blue one is an electrolytic 6μF/8V. I assume it's a Philips brand.

Ok, I am a HUGE fan of old tech. Your detailed analysis and admiration of this old device won me over. I find, repair, and resell old tech like this simply as a way to play with it, admire it, and buy the next one. This thing is AMAZING. Subscribed. Where in the HECK did you find this!?

I enjoyed the peek-a-boo into the P-55... thanks Fran.

Really amazing Fran!!!

I have one of these units. I acquired it as an 11 year old as a gift-repair, in its original advertising box. Fortunately, I fortuitously did not tear it apart. The unit was saved by the fact that I could not get the one rear main screw out. My unit is in like new condition on the exterior. Unfortunately, I have no accessories. Great vid!

Great presentation Fran, and I commend you for taking the risk of dismantling it for your viewers sake... 10/10

Truly amazing. Thanks for sharing Fran!

THAT was fun! Thank Fran

I owned one of these. It belonged to a friend of the family who handed it on to me - this was in the late 80's. He said I could keep the recorder, but he wanted a copy of whatever was on the wire reels (there were 3 reels with it I think). I was into electronics so I was able to power the thing up with three separate power supplies. The rewind mechanism was broken, but it still recorded and played back OK. The reels spin very quickly even on playback - I think the wire runs at over 1 metre per sec. It's so fine though (like cobweb) that a reel still lasts 2 hours or so. The recordings I got off it I copied onto cassette. The gentleman I did this for has long since passed away, but I made myself a copy which I still have. One fine day I'll dig it out and digitise it. The piece he wanted most was a recording of a speech he'd given at a college here in the UK. I got some of it off but the quality was awful, mostly because of the hall acoustics (test recordings I made on it myself sounded much better, about par with a very cheap cassette recorder). Also, at the time the speech was recorded, the motor battery must have been failing because on playback the speed increased gradually until it was unintelligible. If I do ever digitise it I'll have a go at speed-shifting it down again. I sold mine eventually - you might think this a bad decision but we'd recently moved to a very humid part of the country, and the little recorder being in permanent storage was starting to succumb to mildew. I felt it better to sell to a collector.

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing !

Yep Fran. I agree. Superb for its age. I’m a 69yo Retired electronics technician so I appreciate this high tech recorder. I was in Toronto, Canada at 11 yo (1961) when I first took interest in electronics. Tubes then & Transistor radios by about 1963 if memory serves me correctly. This must have been a very expensive device at that time. Hope you can restore to working order. Cheers - Trevor in West Australia

Incredable Fran. What a beautiful piece of equip. Great video ! Love your channel.

Loved this video!

Amazing Fran thks

This was so cool Fran

woah, that circuitry is still futuristic....awesome video! mind=blown

I would love to see this run! Fantastic machine, I love the old style, and the workmanship put into something like that compared to today's on a chip technology that takes zero craftsmanship to build. Thanks so much for putting this up!

Awesome Fran 👍👏☺️

Whoever designed this machine was truly a genius.

That spiral progress cylinder is the way I remember the speedometer worked in our 1968 Volvo 144. :D

Wow Fran! Just amazing tech! Glad I don’t have to replace that belt. Good luck!

Would love to see this all up and running again. Beautiful workmanship went into this pretty little marvel.

Please continue and restore this, this is amazing!

I only have limited experience with tech from that era (Spent many hours enthralled disassembling a 1950-60s telephone exchange switchboard among other things as a kid), but even by today's standards, that is some impressive attention to detail and amazing engineering. Will be watching keenly for updates on this one!

Really curious Fran, are the batteries supposed dry cell, and b leak proof of the time? I used to have a rather fancy transistor radio in the late 60's which had an ever ready 9 volt cell, which had a cardboard shell. Used to extend their life by heating them in the oven. Driving my mother to despair.

Thanks Fran. I love your enthusiasm and your sensitivity to this old equipment. I noticed the tube (valve) was from England where I am. Interesting we supplied this highly specialised part to a German manufacturer not long after the war. Show us if you get it working

When you zoomed in at @21:21, it looked like there was another little tube tucked in there under the yellow wire. Wouldn't surprise me if there were another one tucked somewhere else in there too. What always surprises me is how few components are in these sort of vintage devices - radios, volt meters, etc. I've seen teardowns of early walkmans, and there's probably a hundred components crammed onto those tiny boards, whereas there's probably less than a couple dozen components in this thing. Not to mention how few active components there usually are in them, compared to how many ICs, transistors, etc. there are in modern devices. Anyway, it might be interesting to see a teardown of the power adapter as well. Being from the 50s I'm guessing it used a vacuum tube diode to rectify the AC from the transformer, or maybe a selenium diode. My money would be on the vacuum tube diode though. From what I've seen, selenium diodes were fairly large, and it looks like they've managed to shrink tubes down pretty small by that point, so just going by the small size of the power adapter I'd say it's a tube diode.

So good to see you back in a lab again :)