Barry Mann wrote:
In , on 04/22/04
at 09:55 PM, "Colin B." said:

[ ... ]
So what DOES cause the whiskers to grow? And is there any hope of
aligning a tuner with typical bench equipment (DVM, scope, signal
generator)?
[ ... ]

It's a metallurgical problem, crystal growth. Some alloys do it, some
don't. I don't understand why they use that alloy in tuning capacitors.
They knew about this problem at least by the 50's, maybe earlier. I've
heard some concern that the new lead free solders may have this
problem. (won't that be fun)

Oh joy. As if the problems with lead-free solder weren't significant enough
already!

Regardless, blowing out the tuning capacitor fixed up the tuner beautifully!
Better than I expected, in fact; the tuning dial offset (93.7 appeared at
94.1) disappeared, which makes me think that it might not need an alignment
at all.

Thanks!
Colin