Beseler 45MXT Zone VI Variable Contrast Cold Light Head

[Rick N]

Hi everyone,

My Beseler 45MXT Zone VI VC cold light head blue fluorescent light is intermittently turning on/off. Does anyone know where I can find a replacement tube? Calumet/Zone VI are no longer in business and I can't call for tech. support. Is the replacement tube easy to install and does it require soldering? Any advise/tips would be appreciated!

Thanks

RICK

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

Best bet is to contact Louise Kessler directly at LightSources: lkessler@light-sources.com

Louise is deeply knowledgeable regarding the original Aristo line of cold light products, some of whose grid lamp tubes were also compatible with Zone VI equipment. For example, I have an original Zone VI single tube cold light for my Omega D5XL that has had an Aristo tube upgrade to a V54 lamp. The lamp works fine. LightSources is now the follow-on replacement supplier for the original line of Aristo enlarger head lamps.

Here is the link to their replacement lamp product page: Aristo Replacement Lamps. There is also a huge amount of detailed technical information available in the Aristo Archive.

Good to see your first post Rick...



Ken

 

[Rick N]

Thanks Ken! I will contact Louise at LightSources.

 

[Rick N]

Hi Ken,

How do you like the new Aristo V54 lamp? I still have two of the original Zone VI single tube cold light just sitting in a box, maybe i'll upgrade them to the newer V54 lamp. How are you controlling the contrast with the Aristo V54 single tube lamp?

-RICK-

 

[Ken Nadvornick]

The V54 lamp upgrade happened a number of years ago. Although I do still have the unit, I have since moved to a dual-grid Aristo VCL4500 variable contrast light source.

But back then the upgrade was a big step in terms of being able to reproduce more evenly spaced contrast grade levels. However, I was using Ilford MGIV and a below-the-lens Ilford VC filter set at the time, and I did see an issue.

In my workflow I noticed that there was a rather large grade jump between 1.5 and 3, without an ability to get much else in between. I stress that this observation was only from my own darkroom. But in actual use my filtration sequence appeared to progress somewhat as follows:

1.50=1.50 > 2.00=1.75 > 2.50=1.75 > 3.00=3.00

I note that the 1997 Howard Bond article reproduced in the Aristo Archive ("V54 Cold Lamp Color") makes no mention of this gap, so maybe it was just me. But it was this apparent gap that eventually moved me on to the VCL4500 unit.

I continue to keep the Zone VI unit around for those cases of very dense negatives, as the V54-HI lamp is very bright. When enlarging normal density 35mm negatives to 8x10 I used to routinely place a circular-cut 2x neutral density filter inside the cylindrical can (on top of the diffusion disk) to cut the light down to something more workable at the optimum apertures of my enlarging lenses.

But in some cases this brightness can also be very useful, since with diffusion there are no condenser lenses available to concentrate the illumination when you might need to do that.

Ken