Beseler 45MX Help

[brent8927]

I just bought a 45MX and I have some questions about it...

The enlarger head gets very very hot, and after a while will have that lovely burning smell. Could this be due to dust? I'm hoping it is, but it seems to be due to whoever bought it added some custom bands of metal around the vents both on the top of the lamp assembly and around the base. They did this because light comes out of both of those locations. It's been a while since I used a beseler 45 enlarger, and I'm trying to remember if that was normal for light to come out all of those holes, or if my enlarger is missing something, because when I look at any photograph of a 45mx, they never have those metal bands of which I spoke of.

For the record, the enlarger head doesn't seem to overheat when I take the metal bands off, but then I have the light issue. So the dust issue seems moot.

Also, there's been a substitution on the enlarger--the lens baseboard has been substituted with some kind of big plastic thing... I'll have to attach a picture. But does anyone recognize what this might be? It says "Pro El Co" and the "o" in Pro is a star within a circle.

Thanks!

 

[Konical]

Good Eveing, Brent,

There should be no problem of light leaking from the ventilation holes in a 45 MX; I've never noticed the slightest leakage from mine. My sympathy: it looks as if someone of extremely limited knowledge has done a real butcher job on that enlarger; I'd try to get my money back.

Konical