Well, I seem to have recovered from my key issues with the Brown Bros CTL-A double key that arrived recently via USPS … the key plays well, and only another collector would spot — or even care — that one of the original screws has been swapped out with a Les Logan Speed-X adjustment screw.
I was delighted to find another package in today's mail .. could it be?? Yes!! This box was oversized and stuffed with packing … a key buyer's dream! Inside all that careful packing was my Eddystone bug!! Woo hoo!
Now in the photo at right, the cover appears to have a dent in it, doesn't it? It looks like a shallow dent. That was the photo that was pictured with the key I bought. The seller's description said specifically the cover had no dents … I took a leap of faith on buying it. I think the dent explains why the bidding was so low on such a rare, collectible bug — who wants to pay top dollar for a damaged key?
The joke was on me, really — it key that arrived is the one in the photo!
You could holler “bait-and-switch!” over this, but I'm not — the key that arrived does NOT have the dent in the photo, which is a very good thing. Why the photo has that “dent” I can't explain; the cover has the same pattern of paint loss, but no dent. Go figure!
The mechanics of the key are solid and nearly identical to the Vibrople movement. I have not had time yet to really clean and adjust the key, but with my wild-ass guessing on adjustments it seems like it'll play just fine. The difficult part may be operating a bug without watching its movements — it felt incredibly foreign to use a bug and not watch its movements at the same time.
I have a bunch of non-ham stuff going on this weekend, so I won't get to play with the key for a while, but trust me, it'll be fun to spend time getting to know this key from across the pond.
73 de KY4Z .. dit dit …
But the key in the photo is most certainly NOT the key I have on my desk.