Tuesday, January 7, 2014

Heavy Weight K2 Tuning Knob


I recently bought the heavyweight tuning knob for the K2 off Ebay from a Bulgarian supplier. I’ve seen these tuning knobs before either on Ebay or via other Internet suppliers and have been staggered by the price, as much as £60.00. 

This Bulgarian supplier had the dial priced at £36.00 with free postage which I thought wasn’t too bad and so went ahead and purchased. The knob duly arrived well packaged and protected by a foam surround and a thoughtful inclusion of the required allen key. 

First impression of the knob was a well-constructed nice weighty item and I was keen to mount it on the K2 as quickly as possible, but imagine my disappointment when I offered up the dial and no matter how much I pushed it didn’t fit. 

I checked the dimensions, specifically the width which was 6mm but on checking the shaft width on my K2 it was more like 6.2mm!  I checked for any dirt etc within the knob or on the shaft but all was clean; there was clearly a measurement issue somewhere.   
Had I missed something in the small print?   

However the difference was so small all that was required was a 6.5mm drill and a steady hand and I gently removed some excess metal and hey presto the knob fitted neatly over the shaft. A little extra bonus was that the old K2 knob fitted perfectly on to my OHR 100A!




Anyway, I wrote to the supplier asking him if he knew that maybe Elecraft later versions of the K2 had possibly changed the shaft size. "Boris" kindly wrote back and indeed Elecraft had changed the shaft size somewhere along the 7xxx version, he had mentioned it in the small print but of course I had missed it, Doh! 
Never mind all is now well and Boris will make the small print a little larger for dumb people like me!