Vintage Fridge Shopping

Stoves, Fridges, Radiograms and more
User avatar
Manalto
Inventor of Knob and Tube
Posts: 2108
Joined: Tue May 16, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: Vintage Fridge Shopping

Post by Manalto »

Thanks for that information, and it's good news for me. I'll keep an eye out. My radio listening didn't switch to FM until the 70s. I have had a few tuners from that period, but by then electronics had lost much of their aesthetic charm. Are there any early FM radios you'd recommend I watch for?

1918ColonialRevival
Knows where blueprints are hidden
Posts: 907
Joined: Tue Jan 26, 2016 8:58 pm
Location: Baltimore, MD
Contact:

Re: Vintage Fridge Shopping

Post by 1918ColonialRevival »

Most sets built during these years were good, especially if they have at least 7 tubes. The only downfall of earlier FM sets are that they have a tendency to "drift" a little when you're tuned into a station (you may have to do a little fine-tuning every half hour or so). A lot of the FM sets were put in cabinets that had more of what people now refer to as "Mid Century" styling to them, but there were still some with a pre-war look.

The Fada 790 of 1949 has always been one of my favorite post-WWII sets. It still has pre-war lines, but has the modern FM band:

http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/fada_790.html


The Sonora WEU-240 of 1948 is also a classic looker:

http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/sonora_rad_weu240.html


The Sears Silvertone model 9022 of 1950 also has classic lines:

http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/sears_roeb_9022_ch132871.html


There are a lot of other models out there as well.

User avatar
Manalto
Inventor of Knob and Tube
Posts: 2108
Joined: Tue May 16, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: Vintage Fridge Shopping

Post by Manalto »

That Fada is indeed a handsome set, also in ivory. This sent me off wandering through the world of vintage radios for a while (when I should have been doing something else) There was a 1947 Stromberg-Carlson Model 1101 (AM only) that caught my eye.

Am I hopelessly nostalgic or was the late 1930s through the early 1950s the golden age of industrial design?

phil
Has many leather bound books
Posts: 4616
Joined: Tue Aug 18, 2015 6:11 pm
Location: Near Vancouver BC

Re: Vintage Fridge Shopping

Post by phil »

I have a beautiful 1932 FADA console with doors and 6 legs. but the company went bankrupt the next year. the other FADA radios that are tabletops are a different company. the catalin ones are sought after and nice but upwards of a thousand dollars.

silvertone means it was sold by sears. so a Sears silvertone radio could have another maker. you might notice the same things happening with other departments store models such as fleetwood , Admiral, baycrest Philco is ford. You ll find other makers like montgomery ward, firestone, Everready. If you look in schematic books you will see listings for many companies ending around 1932 as they went into bankruptcy.. but also there were many many radios made in the early 30's.. although economy was tough, people put a little aside because they wanted to stay home and hear what was happening in the world. not having a radio was the equivalent to not having internet access today.

with early FM dont' be caught into buying one if it has the Armstrong band. this first version of FM never caught on and the radios are more useless than a beta VCR.

"The FCC made its decision final on June 27, 1945.[40] It allocated one hundred FM channels from 88–108 MHz, and assigned the former FM band to 'non government fixed and mobile' (42–44 MHz), and television channel 1 (44–50 MHz).[40] A period of allowing existing FM stations to broadcast on both low and high bands ended at midnight on January 8, 1949, at which time any low band transmitters had to be shut down, officially making obsolete 395,000[41] receivers that had already been purchased by the public for the original band."
- from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong

some of those 395,000 recievers are still floating around waiting to surprise people, they won't receive anything useful.

I have lots of Bakelite radios of different case designs, they are fun to collect.

If you wanted an FM radio to actually play and listen to on a regular basis I would pick one of the European radios from about 1965. these are often coined "piano key radios" most of them have a row of white push buttons.

these radios used electrostatic tweeters, the audio by far surpassed most of the US made radios.
I have this one , it's a fairly advanced radio from this era. You get the warm sound of tubes and the FM with the electrostatic tweeters. youl find names like Grundig, Nordmende, and a bunch of others, they all seem to be good performers. they are also usually tubes mounted on early PCB boards. If you look for one check it over well. they all have a lot of plastic bits and that early plastic does get brittle and each is different enough that you can have a real challenge getting parts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkk15XrEwto

I have one of this model. a blaupunkt , I think this is one of the best tube radios for every day listening as it is old enough toe still be tubes and new enough to have some good audio.

moving into the transistor era I would suggest one of these. Zenith made a lot of tube transoceanic and this was them morphing into the transistor market just before the Japanese market basically killed any production in the US and Canada of electronic goods.
early transistor radios like this are usually good performers and often they do still work well. I have one that still works like this and it sounds pretty good as an everyday radio with a little style .. the maps were a cary over from other transocianics , they show when it is best to receive short wave based on your location..

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File ... Transistor)_Radio,_Chassis_18ZT40Z3,_Made_in_the_USA_(12125520946).jpg

here is an early Sony Gendis radio. I have one like it. you can see how they used the wooden case idea but this is a transistor radio, not tubes. this one is AM. note the early sony logo.
http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/sony_sony_ ... is_tr.html

this isn't the first Sony radio but it is an early one. I paid five bucks for mine, which was a nice deal.

This is an Am transmitter. You cna buy it as a kit you build yourself and there are other designs that you can build. with this unit you can use your ipad or a FM reciever or whatever you want to as the source. then it broadcasts a low strength AM signal.. so you can stream from your phone or whatever you like and rebroadcast that on the AM band and then you can tune any Am radio into your stream, which could be an FM station.
https://radiojayallen.com/sstran-amt-30 ... ansmitter/

so with this workaround you can use any Am radio to play FM.

I've also got a little unit that is an FM reciever and it is for a car with an early AM radio. It is a little FM reciever and it will rebroadcast the FM signal it is tuned to, but not over the air, you have to couple it to the car antenna and tune your AM car radio to a set frequency and this will also make FM play out of the AM radio.
most of the early pre-war radios are nice to listen to at fairly low volume, they have a warm sound you don't get from modern solids state gear. it suits our old houses. They are not suitable for listening to ACDC or rap music at high volume, they don't have the bass to handle too much of that. you would just damage the old and tattered speakers,, some of the higher end consoles do pretty well and will fill a room with sound quite nicely but they are not suitable for high volume rock. of course if you dontl; shake them apart you can play what you like.

If you want an old radio keep in mind that they all need some restoration. new filter capacitors at the absolute minimum.. buying an unrestored radio in "working" condition and putting it into use with no restoration is possible but it usually ends in the radio failing to work properly.

Once restored they are safe and reliable and can be used daily with no issues. If anyone here wants to try restoring one or would like to purchase a restored one I might be able to help point you in a the right direction. I dont have enough room to even display all the ones I have properly and many are just rough ones in waiting for restoration but it is a really fun hobby.

Phil

User avatar
Manalto
Inventor of Knob and Tube
Posts: 2108
Joined: Tue May 16, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: Vintage Fridge Shopping

Post by Manalto »

Thanks, Phil, that's interesting. As much as I like the aesthetics of the late 30s through early 50s radios, I'm spread too thin now to nurture one back to healthy function. I'd wind up with it stuck in a closet, or worse, on display where I'd have to respond to inquiries with a pathetic, "No, but I'm planning to restore it one of these days."

The best I've been able to do is pick up a couple of Tivoli Audio Model Ones, which have a bit of a retro vibe - and a problematic (crackly) station selector control.

phil
Has many leather bound books
Posts: 4616
Joined: Tue Aug 18, 2015 6:11 pm
Location: Near Vancouver BC

Re: Vintage Fridge Shopping

Post by phil »

does the Tivoli Audio have good sound?
the Bose waveradios have a folded horn inside and they produce remarkably good sound quality for a radio without separate speakers. not cheap but they do sound nice.

I hate most of the newer ones, the auto tuning gets you close to being on the station and then you can't fine tune it and they just have way too many buttons for stuff I never use. I find I cant' read what they are for without running for my glasses.

one way to cheat is just to put a modern radio behind or inside your old radio, If you don't have patience and time to replace the capacitors then I'd look for someone who might do it for you , or buy one that has been restored. I don't have too many that are FM as I collect mainly stuff from the 20's to the early 50's... for sound some of the early 70's component stereos are really nice, they have good audio and don't have a million buttons to complicate things. If you can find one of those that is before the digital tuner or CD age I think you might do well and a lot in that era will often still play well without restoration.
I don't really like collecting too many transistor radios so I shy from them but I would say , if a radio is a transistor set you have a better chance that you can use it without re-capping it. the tube audio stuff runs at higher voltages and the caps fail a bit differently..

signs of caps failing will often be like this : the sound goes up and down , or it plays but it also hums, or I plugged it in and a it went' bang like a firecracker and then a cloud of smoke came out.

a lot of peole are lead to believe their recievers are digital.. but speakers arent' digital they are analogue. it doesn't matter if the device is a computer or a cell phone or some other audio device, those leads that go to the speaker are not digital they are audio.. Your cel phone is the same.. the headphones arent' digital so you can quite easily use that as an output.

so for example you can pick up a 1970's or 80's ghetto blaster at a garage sale quite cheaply and they have nice sound. then simply buy a cord with a little headphone jack to fit your phone on one end and the two RCA jacks ( or banana jacks) to connect to the left and right on the ghetto blaster... or maybe to a 1970's stereo amplifier. now you can play your itunes if you are into that or you can play your Mp3's or download a radio app.

I recently watched a pretty good Utube video where the guy explained how to hack into the wiring on 1980's ghetto blasters that were not fitted with and audio input jack, but many were.

by the 90's they started to go into teeny IC's and multi layered boards and they are really hard to work on, but the earlier transister stuff like early 70's stuff , it can often be repaired if it fails.

I bought a hitachi sterio with tape deck and separate speakers about 1985 It came with an original receipt for about $1500 in about 1972 or so.. I paid oh something like 400.00 or so. a lot even then. a Datsun 510 was about twice that new. They weren't the kind of throwaway junk we get today. They were half the price of a new car!

I like the tube stuff, tubes ended around 1965 to 1970 but the US army still used tubes a lot longer and many who were trained int he army got good tube theory triaining. the tube stuff is mostly all point to point wiring, easy to fix.. there are a few tubes that are hard to get but for the most part you can get any tube and if you can;t there is a substitute or a workaround using some other tube. so most radios that are made with tubes and reasonably complete can be restored.. when you get into transisters some fix that stuff but I stop about there.. and if you get really new you might as well chuck it because it's so tiny.. there are some who can work on microscopic chips and thins but I have absolutely no interest in that.

for the most part if a radio has the right knobs and the case is in decent enough shape to enjoy or maybe restore It is saveable... things like broken dial scales can be challenges but there is usually some workaround. blown transformers are bad becuase often they are sized physically or electrically and to replace them you need somethign original or close enough to work. the transformers and speakers can be damaged by trying to run tube gear with old electrolytic capacitors.. when I buy them I ask questions, if the ownere plugs it in I might take notice what it does but once in my hands I dont; go plugging tube stuff in unless i check the wiring and at least replace the electrolytic ( filter) caps .. these caps smooth the AC ripple out and if they fail they won't do their job and they will sometimes short out take out the speaker coil or the transformer.

after replacing at leas the filter caps I power them on gradually but I watch the current draw and look for signs of stuff overheating..

once they play at least somewhat I start replacing all the other caps and test in between to make sure I haven't goofed up. I also check any resistors and sometimes I find resistors that fail , sometimes they will open or go higher in value ( to a higher resistance or more resistance) bad resistors can cause the tube voltages and things to differ from what they were originally. tube stuff is remarkably forgiving for the most part, so if a resistor drifts off it's original value by 10 or even 20 percent it wont' usually stop things from working.. and while tubes can and do fail.. most of the radios I find ave good tubes.. they keep well and tubes don't really fail due to age.

phil
Has many leather bound books
Posts: 4616
Joined: Tue Aug 18, 2015 6:11 pm
Location: Near Vancouver BC

Re: Vintage Fridge Shopping

Post by phil »

Manalto wrote:Thanks, Phil, that's interesting. As much as I like the aesthetics of the late 30s through early 50s radios, I'm spread too thin now to nurture one back to healthy function. I'd wind up with it stuck in a closet, or worse, on display where I'd have to respond to inquiries with a pathetic, "No, but I'm planning to restore it one of these days."

The best I've been able to do is pick up a couple of Tivoli Audio Model Ones, which have a bit of a retro vibe - and a problematic (crackly) station selector control.


crackly volume controls are common and it is usually dust in the switches. You could try de-oxit this is a contact cleaner spray if it is the volume control. Of course you need to try to get it inside the control and work the control back and forth to do any good. de-oxit is one of the more expensive control cleaners. If the station tuning and not the volume is crackly that might be dust in the tuning capacitor. you will see a gizmo with metal fins that fit close to one another. if dust gets between the fins it will cause crackling or if the fins touch one another the radio will go dead while they are touching. So I'd carefully try to blow it out,, maybe using a can of dust off and try not to bend the fins and dont' turn any screws.
usually they have screws on top to adjust them.. dont'; play with the screws they need to be adjusted properly or you will do more harm than good and maybe just make it so far out of adjustment that you can't figure out how to get it back.

As long as you don't turn screws the alignment of the radio is probably just fine. its something I will tweak if I do a restoration but I'd advise just don't touch adjustments.. and you don't want me to ramble on about how to do the alignment.. it's not super hard but you have to do it correctly.

User avatar
Manalto
Inventor of Knob and Tube
Posts: 2108
Joined: Tue May 16, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: Vintage Fridge Shopping

Post by Manalto »

The station selector would crackle loudly, and it was difficult to tune in a station. Whereas on a properly-functioning radio, as you turn the tuning knob, the station would gradually come into clear "focus", on the Model One, the tuner seemed hyper-sensitive and the tiniest movement would skip past the station. I found advice on good-ol'-YouTube for that problem. They recommended turning the radio on, putting the volume at the lowest setting and turning the tuning knob back and forth throughout its range for several minutes. If this is clearing out dust or oxidation, I wondered why the radio must be turned on, but I followed the instructions and there was some improvement - but not perfect. The sound quality of the Tivoli Model One is excellent; deep, rich bass and bright, clear treble. The case is wood. To me, its inoffensive simplicity makes it compatible with vintage surroundings, but it's a far cry from the beautiful styling of the 30s-50s.

ImageTivoli Audio Model One by James McInnis, on Flickr

phil
Has many leather bound books
Posts: 4616
Joined: Tue Aug 18, 2015 6:11 pm
Location: Near Vancouver BC

Re: Vintage Fridge Shopping

Post by phil »

if the fins of the tuning cap short it will kill the audio completely. sometimes If I get finicky ones I take the tuning capacitor out of circuit and hok a light otr test meter to it and to it's ground and then I can search for spots whhere maybe someone bent a fin or dirt got inside to short it. during restoration I usually just use a jet of air with a little squit bottle of alcohol and give it a little blast so it gets the air and alcohol mist and that cleans pretty well.. of course thinking of safety as a spark could ignite the vaporized alcohol.

on old sets from the 20's sometimes the fins are built by using a lead core and that holds the fins in place. I guess they have a factory jig that holds the fins and then they cast the lead core in place. what hapens with those is the lead takes on water and expands. some of the really old ones are too warped and that is difficult to deal with. I have heard of other collectors that remove the cap and hook it to about a 1000 volt transformer the idea is if there is a little curl of metal like a hair from steel wool or something that it burns it up when it contacts... interesting technique.

I had one that I noticed had bent fin segments so with out thinking i straightened them thinking they had seen some damage. and when I learned more I found old procedures where rather than fine tuning the capacitance with a screw they actually went in and bent the fins through a procedure to align the set.
you will also find a wiper what it does is make contact between the part that rotates and the rest of the tuning cap. its a capacitor and has the most capacitance when fully closed, as you open it the capacitance changes thus tuning the reciever to a station.. the wiper miught be a little metal tab near the shaft.. if that is dirty it might cause your crackly condition.

with cleaning the controls with spray cleaners, usually that is ok , there are some that can be damaged by the chemicals. Ive seen some that were like a piece of carbon that is like paper and wrecked it by using the spray biut it was a very old one.

the volume control is a variable resistor if you know the resistance you might be able to sub a different one. you can measure that with a meter. also it could be possible to add a resistor and that might change the scale enough to move you away from the spot that gets used a lot. between nothing and low volume is usually where you want it and that might only be a small part of the rotation. Its very common for newer stuff to have scratchy controls , just cheap parts.. I'd just try cleaning it and then you can replace it if it's really necessary. I agree I like the simplicity. one thing thats nice about old radios is they usually are quite simple to operate without a lot of gizmos that do no more than add "features" they make the specs look better.

sometimes speakers have a voice coil that moves near a shaft and dirt or iron filings can get drawn in there and make a crunchy sound.. on older ones you can sometimes take them apart and re-align these parts. if you gently push on the cone it should move freely and not make crunchy noises. on newer speakers they sometimes used foam rubber and it falls apart with age.

User avatar
Manalto
Inventor of Knob and Tube
Posts: 2108
Joined: Tue May 16, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: Vintage Fridge Shopping

Post by Manalto »

Thanks, Phil.

Back to refrigerators - I've been occasionally checking Craigslist for vintage refrigerators, just out of curiosity. There are not many new listings appearing and nothing interesting among them. I guess I lucked out with my hat trick.

Post Reply