The picture of the one that has been withdrawn, is not motorised. What you can see at the top are pulleys and if you roughly know where to look, you can see the right wheel in the front, meaning it is a hand adjusted unit.
Suggesting you will not be using the enlarger baseboard makes me think you have never physically seen a De Vere enlarger, I would strongly suggest you may wish to rethink that idea. Possibly the strongest feature of the De Vere enlargers is the baseboard and protruding out of the front, the adjusting wheels; which in most units use chains to adjust the head height with one wheel and the negative stage with the other wheel. The accuracy of this system is unbelievable, better than any enlarger I have used. The ease of using this system, is easier than any other enlarger I have used. The locking mechanism for the head stage and negative stage, is the best I have ever used. I can imagine that a system of pulleys would allow for easier and dare I say it, greater accuracy than a chain system. I've never seen a De Vere enlarger with pulleys, all of them have used chains.
The exception being the De Vere horizontal enlargers which are motorised for head stage adjustment and negative stage adjustment. I would never like to have a motorised focusing system, it is not as easy to use as a hand adjusted system. You can sometimes be going back and forth guestimating when to release the button and hoping the negative is focused correctly. I've also used some motorised Beseler enlargers, great for getting close, but we always used hand focus to get a perfectly adjusted negative.
That complete focusing system is directly underneath the baseboard and actually holds the baseboard frame, which is fully adjustable in each corner for unbelievable accuracy with negative and head alignment. In short, messing around with the baseboard, is something I think you may wish to reconsider. I've had my De Vere freestanding 504 enlarger for almost 20 years. When I bought it from the professional photo lab, I aligned it as best as I could. It was really wonderful. Eventually I picked up a mirror alignment unit. The negative stage was ever so slightly out of alignment and once that was adjusted I then readjusted the baseboard by starting afresh and moving each corner adjustment until the baseboard was dead parallel to the negative and head stage. I know of no other enlarger system as good as this one to seriously align every part of the enlargers enlarging assembly.
The results of my alignment makeover were that the prints I had been making were pretty good, but now they were pretty unbelievable; technically speaking that is. The crispness, corner to corner from 135 negatives through to 12x13cm negatives was something one had to actually see to believe.
De Vere enlargers are very simple, but also very complex. The chassis, which holds everything together, is the key. The head stage, negative stage and the baseboard stage are all able to be perfectly aligned to each other because of the rigidness of the chassis. This includes when you drop the baseboard stage almost to the floor, for super big enlargements. Once aligned, unless you tip the enlarger over or give it a serious knock, then going out of alignment is rare, not impossible, but really, really rare. Super hard work with an enlarger being constantly worked two shifts a day 5 days a week, year in year out, will also make things go awry, but generally, we don't do that as amatuers.
Prior to acquiring my own De Vere enlarger, I had used a plethora of them in a pro lab and also watched the De Vere technician give a few of them services, including checking for alignment and adjusting if required. It was this ability to almost infinitely adjust and really lock things in place that made me lust for one of these units; never thinking I could afford one.
Mick.
Enjoy your LPL!
