Pongs in electronics

Your interpretations of smells can be substantially different than say, mine. When I smell the magic smoke, I don't think of farm animals or a tuna boat, I think of #1 not smelling it at all because it's full of caustic chemicals.

Some pre war Philips radio sets had rubber-covered wiring that stank like rotted manure when you touched it with a soldering iron. I have no idea what they used in it that was different from other makes.

I don't think he's talking about smoke as much as he's referring to the distinct smell of leaking electrolytics. I've got a section of test equipment parts-mules (probably 150 different pieces or so. The smell down that aisle is quite distinct! I'd say that "fishy" is as good a term as I can think of.

Last room full of older electronics I was in was a Bell microwave relay hut filled with Western Electric gear. It was being decommissioned because fiber was taking over so it was being stripped. We got a bunch of goodies, a whole pickup load of two sizes or waveguide, parts/pieces/tubes/vacuum relays alls sorts of stuff including one 5 gig and one 7 gig transcievers both working (don't qoute me on the freqs it's been a long time). Everything was tube operated so this was built in the 60's. I don't recall any fishy smell probably because the equipment was well maintained.

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So a different smell to overheating usual rubber smell?

I don't remember smelling that elecrolyte fishy smell for any 70s or earlier caps. Someone must have decided in the 80s there was a useful way of getting rid of abattoir or fish processors fatty waste as a bulking agent and dielectric breakdown properties or something in caps. Similar reason for use in some magnet wire lacquer it would seem

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For east ponders is "parts-mules " what we call a "graveyard" ?

Yup! Either term applies. I've used both in the past.

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Any idea what the distinctive (neutral, not pleasant not unpleasant) smell is of ex-services electronic equipment is (UK anyway). If you go down the lines of a radio rally/ hamfest the pitch of the guys specialising in selling military surplus is quite distinctive. Military tropicalisation ? anti-fungal spray ? mothballing agent ?

Yes, quite distinctly different.

There are two smells I associate with that sort of thing. One is Chatterton's Compound, a sort of tar used to fill cable jointing boxes, it was more common in government surplus stores.

The other comes from a shellac-based varnish that was used to tropicalise paxolin tagboards, but I don't know the cause of that smell because shellac is supposed to be odourless. It isn't a fungicide additive because I have smelled it when opening up some equipment I built myself a long time ago. I had tropicalised it with a varnish which I made by dissolving shellac flakes in alcohol, there were no other ingredients.

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Apparently you haven't replaced capacitors with the 'fishy' smell. It most definitely is NOT the smoke coming out and it REALLY REALLY smells like fish -- BAD fish and a LOT of it -- and just from a 6 mm diameter 11 mm tall cap. Worse yet, when one cap is bad there are usually many more (often all) to replace so the shop will stink for an hour or two.

G=B2

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I was wondering if it was treatment to webbing associated with a lot of that sort of stuff rather than the electronics as such.