MR71 Magic Eye and LED upgrade

jwrosenthal

Super Member
Just wanted to share my evening project. I had a very weak tuning eye and bought the replacement 6HU6 on eBay- it was NOS Amperex, nothing Mc specific.
And despite my lamps and gels being in fine shape, the white paint on the festoon lamps
was scaling and I knew the heat was not doing the gels any favors in the long run, so decided to get LED replacements, The seller of the bulbs is named Ed and goes by the eBay handle qua-co (he was recommended in another thread). He’s very helpful and shipping was fast. I ordered the “warm white” to replace these bulbs but got his green bulbs to replace the bleached out gels on my other 71 and aquamarine meter bulbs (that will be for this weekend).

I read the thread on replacing the magic eye on an MX-110 and it seemed simple on that write up, but I could see no way to “swing” the tube holder out and had to remove the tuner glass to access the 2 screws and nuts holding the tube carrier in place (which touching that dial glass almost made me soil myself). After fishing the holder out through the bottom (which is attached to the meter bulb assembly), I got the new eye in and it is bright and fast responding unlike my older one which was barely visible.

The LED’s were a drop in- you just need to align them to shine in the correct direction at the sides of the dial glass.
The 6HU6 replacement wasn’t a hair raising experience, but getting that close to the dial glass, let alone remove it, makes me nervous-look at that lettering wrong and it flies back to upstate NY.
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