I am looking at buying a durst ac1201 enlarger. The seller tells me that the colour analysing isn't working.
What i can't work out is can this unit be removed, and a normal stopclock be used, such as that made by RH designs? Does it use the 3 pin plugs like the smaller durst enlargers; M605 etc.
I will only be using it to do black and white work, so do not require a analyser.
If anyone has any other information about this enlarger i would love to know. There doesn't seem to be much on the internet.
I acquired a similar enlarger and found that the wiring into the head was complicated to say the least. You might want to give Richard Ross a call about connecting a stop clock timer - but I dont like your chances.
I took the colour head off my unit and replaced it with an Ilford 500 head. This arrangement works well. There's plenty of documentation available on the 500 heads and they appear on the market regularly (although some are over priced).
I have an AC1200 and would not want to run it without the control unit. I'm not sure about the differences between the AC1200 and AC1201 but things are complicated further in the AC1200 in that the power supply is controlled by the main control unit too, so even getting any volts out of it without the control unit working would be problematic...
As long as you can switch the main unit in to Timer mode and use it's in-built timer then you can use it as a normal B&W or colour enlarger but if the unit is completely dead then I would give it a miss as the bottom line would mean buying a simpler replacement power supply or re-wire the existing one and then rewire the head - none of which is rocket-surgery, but is time-consuming and assumes a certain amount of electrical knowledge to do safely.
I'm now the owner of the AC1201, will be picking it up in a week.
The controll unit is working in timer mode so the enlarger is still useable.
It cost me about the same as my M605 did a few years ago.
I was thinking about converting it to an Ilford 500 system, but will need to do a bit of research first, and i havent seen a head for sale in the UK for ages, at least not in the North.