Want to Buy Durst M605 Enlarger, Bay Area

[Dheidel]

Coming back to printing after a long absence and looking for a Durst M605 in working order in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. The color head would be preferable but not a dealbreaker. I’ve never printed color before and I’m hoping to work my way up to it, but I’m not in a rush to do so.

Open to other suggestions for an enlarger if you’re local and have something you’d like to sell. I want an enlarger that can print up to 6x6 negatives, potentially up to 11x14 prints, and that packs away pretty small so my wife doesn’t kill me . M605 seems to check those boxes, particularly the last one.

 

[darkroommike]

Durst is good, the older M601 is pretty similar and used most of the same accessories. The M670 is also very similar and do up to 6x7 and again has a lot of parts in common. Import of Durst products to the USA was sporadic and distribution was very uneven. Durst is an excellent choice just be sure that the machine has all it's parts, carrier inserts and lens boards can be 3D printed, I made a set for my M601. And if you run into any spares, snap them up!

 

[MattKing]

The Durst machines are good and are smallish.
I moved to my LPL 7700/Saunders LPL 670 because of a similar small footprint, but the column is longer.
The build quality of the LPL/Saunders LPL enlargers actually reminds me of the Durst amateur machines - and they were made and sold new until very recently.
For some strange reason, Durst amateur enlargers were quite common in Western Canada during their heyday.
The high-end professional Durst enlargers are wonderful to work with, but they certainly won't meet your size requirements!

 

[Dheidel]

Thanks, this is all great advice.

If anyone stumbles upon this, I'm still looking and I've expanded my search to the Omega C760 dichroic or, thanks to Matt hyping it, the LPL 670 dichroic (there's a 670 condenser on local Craigslist, but from my searching, it seems like the dichroic heads on their own are pretty rare, so I'm better off just getting the whole thing right off the bat)

 

[MattKing]

thanks to Matt hyping it, the LPL 670 dichroic

It is important to make sure that that is a Saunders LPL 670 or Omega LPL 670.
For some strange reason, that badging is peculiar to the USA.
In Canada and most of the rest of the world, it is marketed as the LPL 7700.
In each case the model number is followed by a designation that indicates the light source - 7700MX for the colour dichroic, VCCE for the Variable Contrast dichroic, and just 7700 for the condenser model.
And to make it more difficult, there is another, less capable model known as the LPL 6700 or LPL 6600 in most of the world, and as the Saunders LPL/Omega LPL 6700 or 6600.
In the latter case, the 6600 is the model with the condenser head, whereas the model number is preceded with either VC for the Variable Contrast head or C for the colour dichroic head.
In all cases, the condenser models don't require a separate power supply, while the colour dichroic and VCCE models come with a power supply.

 

[WYann]

Coming back to printing after a long absence and looking for a Durst M605 in working order in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. The color head would be preferable but not a dealbreaker. I’ve never printed color before and I’m hoping to work my way up to it, but I’m not in a rush to do so.

Hello Dheidel,

I have exactly what you are looking for. I have a brand new Durst M605 still inside its original box. Tomorrow I will go to the storage locker to look for this box. If I can find it I will upload a few photos here.