Gossen Super Pilot service? Calibration? Battery? Opinions?

[dmr]

This may or may not be my lucky day!

To make a long story long, I was just given a used, as-is, condition unknown, Gossen Super Pilot light meter by a FOAF. This was one of those "if you can use it, it's yours, if not, just toss it" type of things.

From a bit of googling, it looks like this may be a very good find!

Do we have any opinions, good or bad, on this thing?

Two Big Burning Questions<tm> here ...

1. Does anybody know of anybody who does service, particularly check-out and calibration to a known standard on this kind of thing? Any recommendations? I have NO CLUE how accurate this thing is with the correct battery, which brings up ...

2. What kind of battery do you use in yours, if you have one? It looks like it takes the Big Bad PX625, you know, the one that will destroy the universe. It came with one very dead battery of unknown age. I had to scrape and clean some greenish grode out of the battery compartment, which really was not that bad. I'm thinking of stopping by the Real Camera Shop<tm> when I'm in the city tomorrow to see if they have the Wein battery. Anybody familiar with these?

I tried one of the modern 625s out of one of the GIII, and it does measure light. It's not very sunny now, so I can't give it a sunny-16 sanity check, but it does agree within about 3/4 of a stop with the black GIII, which has the "wrong" battery and has not been recalibrated.

3. (I lied, there are 3 questions) Does anybody know the approximate vintage of this meter? My guess is that it's mid 80s, but I really have no clue.

Thanks as usual, gang.

 

[DWThomas]

I think it's from the 70's, as I own one and I had a main camera with built-in metering by the early 80s. I tried to bring it back into use a year or so ago and quickly tired of the effort. (I have an engineering/electronics/mechanical tinkerer sort of background, but eyesight and fine motor coordination aren't as good as they once were.) I purchased one of the (outrageously priced IMO) adaptors to use a silver oxide cell, only to discover the spring battery contact in my Super Pilot was a bifurcated gizmo that didn't really contact the adaptor very well. I did a little ugly work with a soldering iron and had it sort of working, at least enough to try it.

I then relived the past, and quickly realized that the Super Pilots are very sluggish to settle on a reading. Way back when, my meter before that had been a Gossen LunaSix of 1960s vintage which was much faster and had better range. It also crapped out and lasted just past the repair warranty after an expensive repair. That's when I decided to get something cheaper and bought the S-P. Had I not shortly after switched to a primary camera with built-in metering, I suspect I would have probably replaced it with something else to preserve my sanity.

Anyway after trying to resurrect it a year or so back, I said "what the heck, it's only money" and bought a nice new compact Gossen DigiSix which I'm pretty happy with.

Sorry to be discouraging, but I don't see the S-P as one of my better acquisitions.

DaveT

 

[John Koehrer]

As DW mentioned, they weren't the fastest responding and had a memory if exposed to a bright light. All CDS meters do/did have this problem. Bakc when a Luna Pro was around $70 new, the Super was around $35-40 & were a good value at that time. Equal at least to the meter in the Glll with maybe a little better range.
Where does that leave you? If it works with the Wein cell, you're golden, If not you're out $5. Some peoples kids spend that on coffee and don't get as much satisfaction.

 

[DWThomas]

Where does that leave you? If it works with the Wein cell, you're golden, If not you're out $5. Some peoples kids spend that on coffee and don't get as much satisfaction.

John makes a good point here -- we're not talking lifestyle-altering investment! I'm not sure what physical sizes are offered in the Wein cells. I've seen references to using them in some equipment by using an 'O' ring to fill out the physical space. In my Super Pilot, the battery chamber was a rather open space with an odd contact arrangement that wasn't very helpful in deviating from the original PX13 cell shape. It's possible that yours could be different, as such products sometimes go through some manufacturing related evolution over a long product lifetime. I suppose since it's in your hand it could be worth a try.

A thread from two years ago where I raised your question (there was a url link here which no longer exists). It includes a picture of the battery compartment of mine, and some earlier suggestions, for the tuppence that might be worth.

DaveT