About six months ago an APUGger was moving to Florida and was selling his extensive darkroom in the Mar Vista area. I bought an archival print washer and some safe lights. He has three enlargers that he really wanted someone to take. I do not know what happened to them. So keep your eyes open and someone else will have an enlarger for you.
Thank you all for your guidance in my quest.
I settled on (maybe I should say 'scored') a Bessler 45 motorized color unit with a 'spare' color head, extra bulbs, custom built stand with adjustable print shelves accommodating up to 20"x 30" prints, an almost full box of 16X20 color print paper and an almost full box of 20X30 color print paper. No guantees on the papers but all together, I'm very happy.
No...not free....$60
But now I'm confused (notice how I said that like it's a new state of mind)
It came with 2 45 color heads. One has the diffuser frosted glass on the bottom and mounts on top of the bellows - fine...got it.
The other has the diffuser frosted glass on the top and mounts....????
Back to confused....
I think that you should go out and collect a few more enlargers so that you can be sure that you made the right decision. APUG helps support and enable GAS, BASS and OCD.
No...not free....$60
But now I'm confused (notice how I said that like it's a new state of mind)
It came with 2 45 color heads. One has the diffuser frosted glass on the bottom and mounts on top of the bellows - fine...got it.
The other has the diffuser frosted glass on the top and mounts....????
Back to confused....
These are (sort of) the two light sources that came with my enlarger. Both of them look like the first one but one has the light source on the top (like the first picture) and the other has the light source on the bottom to mount directly on top of the bellows on the 45M enlarger. How is the first one used? The one with the light on the top of the unit.
This fairy uses an Omega D2V I bought from a local gentleman, one of the type mentioned above who thought his stuff was way more valuable than it was, and then came down some on the price. The D2V is a rather simplistic design but it works. Later on I got a somewhat rusty Beseler 45MCRX and gave it away to a friend. Just lately, another buddy tossed in a nice Saunders/LPL medium format enlarger with a few cameras I bought from him, but I've had the torment of the damned trying to get it functional. (The regulated power supply is missing and I tried using an Omega supply I had lying around, but it keeps blowing bulbs and an eBay source for the Saunders supply is dragging his heels after a supply I bought from him got lost in the mail. Ugh.)