I used to have a few of those small electronic ALR's like the one in the back right corner of this picture. I liked how large the circuit boards were in comparison to the covers. The circuit board basically takes up all the space inside and the eye almost touches the window. Kinda different compared to other electronic photocontrols. There's some for sale on ebay. They look almost exactly like them but made by a different company.
Yeah the mini ALRs look pretty cool but they look odd on a cobrahead IMO lol. It's like seeing one of those short clear PCs on a cobrahead lol. The one on the left is a thermal one with a white SEARS label on it. It's NOS from 1989.
I like the smaller ALR's. They still have the glued in windows like the older Fisher Pierce units. I have a gray 120V thermal ALR too. The only things bad about them is with the glued in window, it could fall out if it dry rots too badly or gets knocked out. Also, because the plastic is harder like the older Sun-Switch units, the cover dry rots pretty fast too and becomes brittle.
Yeah whenever i open up an older Fisher Pierce I have to get a screw driver and pry the cover off (breaking it) and then I just superglue the cover back together again.
Yeah. Even the new Ripley photocontrols today are made of harder plastic than what DTL's or Sun-Tech's are made of. It's softer than what their older controls were made of. But it still cracks easily. There was one that I had ordered a couple years ago that I tried opening the cover by using my thumb to pry back on the cover where the little clip things are and the cover split all the way down the one side of it.
oh wow. They don't use screws anymore? The early Fisher Pierce photocells were glued on so you'll never get them open. That stuff is STRONG! i think the gluse is stronger than the plastic itself lol. The tall blue FP and clear FP i recently got from Joe are glued in place.
Hmm wow all of mine have screw-on covers, which i like so much better, though i guess snap-on is cheaper yet DTL uses screws and their PCs are like the cheapest out off the big 4. Fisher Pierce PCs from the mid-90s or so onwards have really easy to take off covers but the 80s Fisher Pierces are impossible to take off without breaking. Never seen a SunSwitch with a snap-on cover though. Does Ripley still use the SunSwitch name? I don't made any Ripleys of the current design. My newest one is one from either 2000 or 2002, an electronic blue Ripley.