Alignment tools?

I hope someone from the group has some experience and a good suggestion for an alignment screwdriver which will fit the small cores used in a lot of the Japanese radios. These are a very small straight blade slot which is a good fit for some of the smallest precision screwdrivers but I need something that is not metal.

I have a pretty wide selection of GC brand alignment tools (one of their large roll up kits plus some additional wands) but the screwdriver type blades are too large for these little cores. Some of the "cheapie" tools fit but do not work well (either soft plastic or easily broken/worn tips). In many cases, in addition to a tiny blade, the shaft also needs to be several inches long to fit through a shield compartment.

I spent part of the weekend repairing a Kenwood R-820 receiver that I originally bought for parts and filters for other projects but when it arrived it looked too nice to part out. The problem was an emitter follower stage in the carrier oscillator had died which removed this input from the PLL phase detector and did not allow the VCO to work. It only took a few minutes with the scope to diagnose the basic problem and this particular part of the radio was easy to access so the part replacement was fast and easy. But the previous owner apparently tried to fix it with an alignment so the entire PLL/VCO section had to be realigned and that took about twice as long as it should have while I worked with less than perfect tools.

I already had one R-820 paired with my TS-820S but I never used that one on AM since the TS-820S doesn't do AM. This one has the optional 6 Khz. AM filter in addition to the extra CW filters and I temporarily patched it in with my Ranger/Desk in place of the SX-88. The first station I heard last night was W9AD running his Flex radio and his excellent audio sounded very nice through the Kenwood. I used it as part of a roundtable this morning on 75 and it is not going to permanently take the place of the SX-88 but it is going to be paired with one of my AM transmitters. The audio is very nice and the variable bandwidth tuning allows the bandwidth on AM to be varied from around 4 to 6 Khz. (or narrower if the SSB filters are chosen instead). Now I need one of the oddball connectors to fit the back to access the standby contacts-this morning I had to do manual standby switching which is never fun and especially bad before the first cup of coffee.

Rodger WQ9E