Ilford Ilfospeed 500 Multigrade Head For De Vere 504

[CGross]

I am considering an Ilford Ilfospeed 500 Multigrade Head that is currently on ebay and I am wondering if it would be worth the shipping to get it to the states.

These seem to be somewhat rare, and the first I have seen on ebay with the De Vere 504 mounting kit. I do think the price is reasonable, but shipping this thing may be outrageous.

I have a De Vere 504 with the Dichromat Color Head and the 500W 120V power supply. Would this head provide me any benefit over the color head?
Does anyone have an opinion/experience with this particular head that may help persuade me to say "Yes, get it", or "No, it's not worth it" !!

I do not have any plans to print anything other than B&W if that helps. At least for now anyways.

The seller states they do not want to ship to the states due to weight, but I have a question off to see how firm that is. If they won't ship to the US then maybe a fellow APUG'er in the UK can get a good deal.

The item number is 130079552173.

Thanks in advance.
Cody

 

[bazz8]

I have one and can not speak more highly about them as a even light scource and green and bluelight system,I have mine set up with the RHDesign 500 anylser now this combo rocks,why simply downloaded the presets for the anylserfrom Chris Woodhouse site(easily available from the RHD site ) load them on to the anylser channels and you have perfect gd 0 to gd 5 of most of the popular papers kodak ilfors agfa etc fibre and resin test in resin print in fibre and pretty much bang on every time.
Why all that you must have the 500 multigrade head first I have the manual
somwhere in my desk search hard for one as they are worth the effort.
regards
Barry Treleaven

 

[Leon]

thanks for the heads up Cody - I might be interested if you are not

 

[CGross]

It sold...darn!!....anyways, I am still interested in getting a head like this or similar for my 504 and I am still interested in the major advantages of a VC head vs. a Color head when printing only B&W.

From what Barry mentions, it sounds like a it would be a great addition.

 

[Leon]

It sold...darn!!....

... and not to me - double darn

 

[jhorvat]

The light output from Ilform head will be at least 1 stop less than from the colour head of the same wattage (at least compared to Durst L1000). Some people suggest replacing the difusion box of Ilford head with a set of prisms to minimise the light loss. The problem with Ilford head is that much of light misses the difusing box, which has two too small windows to collect the light from the bulbs.

Other than this, 500H is very nice to work with and there is no problem at all if you don't use a slow warmtone paper, like Forte Polywarmtone with Neutol WA.

Joseph