ZBE Enlarger / Starlite 55 Head - Support Numbers?

tallenpatterson · Jun 17, 2018

I have a ZBE enlarger and starting to encounter an issue with it. It will not hit the first reference point, thereby rendering the entire thing useless. Does anyone know if there are support numbers still? I've heard that there is a company that did take over this when they went out of business long ago, but I'm not finding it.

Or, does anyone have experience with the ZBE?

Bob Carnie · Jun 17, 2018

All Bad ... I think you are out of luck , I had issues with a brand new ZBE in fact two of them the cold light and the 1k... they were in buisness then and were completely useless in helping me. Sorry for the rant but that was about 10k of investment years back that went completely down the drain.

tallenpatterson · Jun 17, 2018

Well I was advised to enjoy while I had it since it was free. Might be the time to replace...with something simpler

Bob Carnie · Jun 17, 2018

Don't get me wrong... they were super enlarger heads.. but the support was the worst I have ever encountered and that is saying alot.

AgX · Jun 17, 2018

First time I learn of a ZBE enlarger. Can someone give a link to a photograph of such?

Bob Carnie · Jun 17, 2018

AgX said:
First time I learn of a ZBE enlarger. Can someone give a link to a photograph of such?

they were launched in the 90's very expensive ... google Chromira they now make these machines.

tallenpatterson · Jun 21, 2018

AgX said:
First time I learn of a ZBE enlarger. Can someone give a link to a photograph of such?

This is mine. It's just not working properly and very complicated for me to figure out. Hoping the link someone mentioned helps me find support.

AgX · Jun 21, 2018

Thank you!

DREW WILEY · Jun 29, 2018

Find a true Gyro Gearloose electronics store in some big city and ask around for someone who can diagnose circuits. ZBE is long gone. You could also call Jim Browning at Digital Mask and see if he still knows of anyone. He was involved in the development of the Chromira. ZBE supplied me with some things. I sure wouldn't give up on a Starlight just because of an electronic glitch. But my own philosophy is to never use an enlarger I can't fix myself. The less electronics, the better; or at least have a spare control, which might be impossible in this case. Find an old time geek who knows what a soldering iron is.

mshchem · Jun 29, 2018

DREW WILEY said:
Find a true Gyro Gearloose electronics store in some big city and ask around for someone who can diagnose circuits. ZBE is long gone. You could also call Jim Browning at Digital Mask and see if he still knows of anyone. He was involved in the development of the Chromira. ZBE supplied me with some things. I sure wouldn't give up on a Starlight just because of an electronic glitch. But my own philosophy is to never use an enlarger I can't fix myself. The less electronics, the better; or at least have a spare control, which might be impossible in this case. Find an old time geek who knows what a soldering iron is.

The Chromira thing is pretty cool. Now if I could buy something like that that would expose digital images on photo paper, and let me develop it myself. Well that would be a breakthrough!
No clogged inkjets, no runny dyes. It would need to work with B&W. Too bad.
Ilford are you listening?

AgX · Jun 30, 2018

You might knock at the door of some industrial lab, they might have a sample with issues they have to substitute.
But expect to make some space at your darkroom...

DREW WILEY · Jul 3, 2018

Another thing I have sometimes done is to bypass all the fancy solid state feedback controls and simply hard wire the system. The main problem with the Starlight was overheating. They were completely aware of it. It was built back when there was ample demand for very powerful colorheads that could punch big slow Cibachrome prints. I never cared for the salt-and-peppery effect of the Chromira printers, though it's far less obnoxious than the streaking people often got back then with big laser printers. I could have had one cheap (5% the original price), and a very nice drum scanner for free, but digital
I ain't. In that case, it wasn't cheap because ZBE defaulted on service, but because Kodak did on their own early digital device contracts, which bankrupted the most active lab in town. He was still expected to make payments to Kodak for expensive gear they refused to honor their own service contract on. That's the whole problem with rushing to be first in line.
Competitive equipment hits the market before yours is even paid off; and you have to replace it on a regular basis anyway. Kodak wanted $40,000 a yr just for the service contract, paid in advance. Some of my enlargers are fifty years old, and
they'll be working perfectly another fifty. And they produce color better than any digital device. Yeah, someday the right paper might be gone; but I won't be around forever either.

Bob Carnie · Jul 4, 2018

I had two ZBE products that when needed help was asked for a crazy service contract to even talk on phone, both starlight and cold head were less than a year old and both were tossed in the garbage.
tubes for the coldhead seemed to be the problem if I remember right.

I bought the starlight to punch through the ciba chromes as Drew points out.

DREW WILEY · Jul 5, 2018

Back then I used a 2000W Durst colorhead. Talk about running hot! I tossed all the electronics and rewired the thing with truck engine wire, then right into an ordinary 220V outlet which I had previously tested for voltage consistency. But later I designed my own additive head which runs much cooler. I'm sure a Starlight could be rewired; but that kind of tedious project might not appeal to everyone.

Bob Carnie · Jul 5, 2018

Drew - Not sure if you remember the HK Head , it had 16 bulbs and was an incredible source of light, not sure what happened to these units, I worked for a large imaging company in the 80's that used this with a computer driven step and repeat image
comping machine, this was about 10 years before the lambdas came out and we made thousands of composite negs and trans and this HK was the best head I have used hands down.

DREW WILEY · Jul 5, 2018

Hard to say. There was a dealer over in SF with all kinds of commercial enlargers in storage in a basement. Since he wouldn't flinch an inch on the obscene asking prices, most of them were still there unsold when he finally but predictably went out of business; and presumably they all went to landfill. My friend with an even larger collection of professional enlargers recently closed shop; and I have no more space for that kind of stuff. He probably won't even bother trying to sell it. Why would he? - he's a multimillionaire who's already had a couple of heart attacks and would be wiser spending his few remaining years with his grandkids instead of something stressful. I haven't done anything in the darkroom recently. I've been out shooting and have also been doing woodworking. It's that time of year. But I still need to tune-up my own multi-bulb enlarger - really just needs one bulb changed out; but whenever I do that, I check everything related.

ZBE Enlarger / Starlite 55 Head - Support Numbers?

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