BACKGROUND
A.K.A ... A BIT OF HISTORY
Take a trip back a few years, actually almost 50, when Australian legendary engineers walked the earth! I am talking about three in particular, and one especially.
Click on their name to get a more detailed view of their incredible achievements
The link for Cyril is a 10 page paper but well worth the read and also deals with the interconnections of these three gentlemen.
As this hybrid module is directly connected to Cyril Murray, I will not mention the first two engineers, although they were extraordinary achievers in their own fields.
Cyril Murray established a company called Murray Amplifiers, bringing his designs to the outside world and his various analog audio products were snapped up across the professional audio industry. Murray Amplifiers in later years morphed into Auditec it seems. It could have been two different marketing strategies because all of the gear I worked with in broadcasting was branded Murray but I have also seen many "Hi End" audio amplifiers intended for the consumer market branded as Auditec - Cyril Murray was the electronics design engineer of both entities.
Murray Amplifiers designed and manufactured a wide range of analog audio related equipment, particularly amplifiers and audio distribution systems ... all were extremely well engineered although cosmetically quite boring ... built to do a job, not look "pretty"
If you see one of their amplifiers online for sale, grab it as they are wonderful amps that just keep on keeping on ... (Allbids in Canberra SOMETIMES has them on their auction site)
Here is just a couple of the companies units
The venerable MA528
12 Channel Distribution Amplifier
Murray Amplifiers were special in so many ways, not least was the use of custom designed and made hybrid modules at both the input and output of these amplifiers ...
The module that I have found sitting in my box of "Gee ... I might need that one day" bits and pieces is the input module, which was designated by Murray as the CHD64, a nice bright Blue epoxy encapsulated "mystery" but functioning as a precision discrete Op amp type of device. Just about any piece of Murray gear has at least one of these (single channel device) and it is easy to spot these when you open up the equipment ... it will look something like this
You have to admire the simplicity of the layout - a dream to work on, unlike many of the "other" manufacturers who produced "rat's nests" internally.
To be honest though, the CHD64 is pretty useless for anything other than a piece of Murray Amplifier equipment or purely as a piece of Australian electronics history!
So ... down to the nuts and bolts
MURRAY AMPLIFIERS (Sydney Australia) - Hybrid Encapsulated Module
Designed by Professor Cyril Murray
Type: CHD64
10 pin thru hole solder pins
Pin 1 is marked with a Black line
25.85mm wide x 18mm height x 3mm thick
TESTING:
It is not practical for me to test this module today but I do know and can vouch for the 100% functioning of this module 25 years ago ... these were the days when the broadcast industry was flipping over to digital EVERYTHING and out goes the "old" analog gear ... I was lucky enough to pickup a few truck loads of these way back then. Back in the workshop I fired them all up to check all was good with the world and anything that I could salvage from a unit (but known to be working) I did. The biggest issue I found with some of these amps was the big Red power switch, some would fail to lock properly. So out came all the usable components such as these modules, those mighty toroids and the power output devices.
COSMETIC CONDITION:
USED (of course)
CLEAN (both the body and the solder leads)
NO damage to either the body (no cracking!) or the leads - these were lifted straight up off the PCB originally.
Now repacked back into the original sealed clear plastic packet I had stored this in ... waiting to be put back into service in another piece Murray audio equipment or just place it in a framed wall hanging for the "museum"
