Let’s check out this PACO C-20 R-C Bridge
Thursday, August 6, 2026 at 06:56:24
Yeah. I bought another one.
Why?
I have no idea. It was cheap, and I like these things. They were untouchable for a while. but are reasonably priced these days. Used to be you couldn’t lay a finger on one for under $100…I’ve purchased a few for as cheap as a couple dollars.
This one was sold to me at the Columbus Hamfest by a gentleman who said it was “plug n play, not plug n pray” - I still had to open it to see. According to the documentation he provided, he purchased it on eBay in 2022 for $85 (the eBay tax on these not-EICO units is a lot less,) and recapped it. Let’s see if that’s true.
Here’s the unit itself:
The eye is nice and bright.
The unit is in good condition overall. Probably didn’t see much use.
Let’s see what’s inside.
Plenty of new parts.
One of the tubes is still branded PACO.
And here’s a bunch of those lovely blue carbon-film precision resistors. They’re fine for this kind of device.
For the most part, I’d say this device only needs 2 things, but there are three I’m going to do:
The first is the power cord. This is in good shape, but I like to at least have polarized cords. That’s an easy fix, and I prefer to have the incoming power on a cable that’s new.
The second is this guy:
This is the across-the-line capacitor. While the ratings are correct, this is not the correct type of part. You need a safety capacitor here, so this one will go.
While I appreciate the guy’s desire to keep the parts close to their original value, there’s no need for this here. Almost anything nearby would work, as these old electrolytics were +/- whatever. He may have done this to pop the voltage up, which is something I haven’t looked at - so this will get examined closely and if necessary, replaced with a single part.
Other than that - does it work? Yeah, it works fine and is as accurate as something like this can be. If you’re looking for one of these and don’t want to pay the EICO/Heathkit tax, PACO and other second-tier manufacturers are good choices as the circuits were identical across almost all of these.
Next part of this series: Coming sometime.
Wrapup and final thoughts: Coming sometime.
References
Manual set: Coming soon.