| Author | Message | ||
     Cooltouch Tinkerer Username: Cooltouch Post Number: 82 Registered: 01-2009 Rating: N/A |
Recently I acquired a couple of FTbs. I can't help it, I have a soft spot for 'em. One of them is the early model, and the other is the FTbn. Now, I've always prefered the "n" for its refinements over the original. But yesterday I was giving them both a thorough cleaning, which involved removing both the top and bottom covers so I could clean out all the film chips, etc, from the bottom and the crud out of the viewfinders. What I noticed pretty quickly was a few of the parts under the bottom plate were different. In one case, the early one has a brass gear with a peg that rotates against a lever, and the later one's is nylon. Another piece that's sort of inset into the floor and rotates with the crank, and I really don't know what it is, seems to be made out of metal with th original and black plastic with the "n" model. I spotted a couple other, more minor, differences too. I've owned a few FTbns and they've always been stone-cold reliable, so I'm thinking it might be moot point, and really I'm just curious more than anything else, but I wonder if folks who have worked on a lot of them over the years might have concluded that the early one is the more reliable of the two? I was thinking about selling the early one and keeping the "n", but now I think I'll go ahead and hang onto it. It's in a bit nicer cosmetic condition than the "n" anyway. |