the Radio Geek thread

Stoves, Fridges, Radiograms and more
phil
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Re: You Might Be an Old Home Owner if...

Post by phil »

I like the bit about watching old TV shows and paying more attention to the background than the movie ;-)

Just saw one on prohibition on Netflix and it had so many shots of interiors and old cars, but the pictures really are a window into the past and there are many examples of moldings and trim etc. many of the images in that weren't just movie sets, they were pictures and old film so the setting is indeed authentic to that era and I find the decor from 1930's and art deco era fascinating.

I love seeing the old radios being used in peoples homes. Everyone with an old house should have an old radio to play with. If anyone here wants to attempt to restore an antique radio to use in their old house I'd be happy to point them in the right direction. Most if reasonably complete, are restorable.

One of my fellow collector friends noted that he heard that if your freezer is half full, you can save power by filling the remaining space with empty cardboard boxes. We do the same but instead of empty boxes we use antique radios and they save heat because they occupy half the available air space in the house ;-)

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jharkin
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Re: You Might Be an Old Home Owner if...

Post by jharkin »

phil wrote:We do the same but instead of empty boxes we use antique radios and they save heat because they occupy half the available air space in the house ;-)



Wait a second.... You aren't the Phil, as in Phil Nelson of Phils Old radio's, are you??
-Jeremy

1790~1800ish Center Chimney Cape

phil
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Re: You Might Be an Old Home Owner if...

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No, that's a different Phil ;-) but "the other Phil" has a really good website and his article on replacing capacitors is the best document for someone who is interested in getting an old radio working. The following link is the best place to start. This is also an example of someone who has done a really well functioning website by just writing simple html code himself.

Myself I am a collector. I know the basics of electronic and cabinet restoration and have done a number of them and house far more future projects than I have lifetime. I have a pretty extensive knob collection. There were thousands of different types. I have many examples of consumer radios from the 20's to the 50's. I admire the wood cabinets from the art deco era and the industrial art. Many of the bakelite radios from the post war era have interesting shapes and designs.

The internet came about as many with tube related technological experience were getting older. One thing that i found encouraging is that since the invent of the internet much of this documentation has become public domain and schematics and procedures have become freely shared. I was taken aback by some who helped me with projects in good will, over the internet and without really even knowing me. The real old time bench technicians are getting on now and websites like Phil's are important for future collectors who won't have the opportunity to ask questions.

Many antique radios were kept in peoples living rooms way past the point where they quit working just because people admired the cabinetry. It isn't hard to find nice examples and most are not extremely expensive. Breadboard radios and Catalin radios and ones that related to famous people are exceptions.

http://antiqueradio.org/recap.htm

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jharkin
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Re: You Might Be an Old Home Owner if...

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phil wrote:No, that's a different Phil ;-) but "the other Phil" has a really good website and his article on replacing capacitors is the best document for someone who is interested in getting an old radio working. The following link is the best place to start. This is also an example of someone who has done a really well functioning website by just writing simple html code himself.



:) I know the site well.. read much of it, which is why I heard the name Phil and a house full of radios and thought you might be the guy.

Ive got a little stash myself and have done a couple rebuilds, all on 60's vintage amplifiers. One of these days I promised my MIL that I will restore her father's 1930s Zenith console. Getting it up and running doesn't scare me... but trying to do a proper RF alignment does.

Ive got all the tools needed except a signal generator... but dont feel confident I'd be able to do it right without the specialist expertise.
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-Jeremy

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Don M
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Re: You Might Be an Old Home Owner if...

Post by Don M »

jharkin wrote:
phil wrote:No, that's a different Phil ;-) but "the other Phil" has a really good website and his article on replacing capacitors is the best document for someone who is interested in getting an old radio working. The following link is the best place to start. This is also an example of someone who has done a really well functioning website by just writing simple html code himself.



:) I know the site well.. read much of it, which is why I heard the name Phil and a house full of radios and thought you might be the guy.

Ive got a little stash myself and have done a couple rebuilds, all on 60's vintage amplifiers. One of these days I promised my MIL that I will restore her father's 1930s Zenith console. Getting it up and running doesn't scare me... but trying to do a proper RF alignment does.

Ive got all the tools needed except a signal generator... but dont feel confident I'd be able to do it right without the specialist expertise.


Hmm! Looks like you have a good old Pioneer receiver & is that a Dynaco tuner I see? I have several 1970s vintage Pioneer receivers & speakers plus some Dynaco equipment as well! :thumbup:

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jharkin
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Re: You Might Be an Old Home Owner if...

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Don M wrote:Hmm! Looks like you have a good old Pioneer receiver & is that a Dynaco tuner I see? I have several 1970s vintage Pioneer receivers & speakers plus some Dynaco equipment as well! :thumbup:


Actually on the left its a Scott 340B reciever vintage '63.. they called them tuner amplifiers... all tube. That was a throwaway I rescued and we got working while I was in college. Its dead again and needs a full rebuild but its a bit daunting - a tube integrated amp, mm/mc phono stage and FM stereo reciever all point to point wired in one chassis is an absolute nightmare of wiring..

On the right are 2 pieces I got when my Grandfather in law passed - Fisher tuner and Eico amp... not sure the vintage but probably 60s as well... no dynaco

The test gear is all functional (50s vintage Hickock tube tester, 1948 Heathkit VTVM, Heathkit signal tracer of unkown vintage plus my dads 80s tectronix o'scope) as is my McIntosh (1961) which is upstairs where it belongs in the main stereo :)
-Jeremy

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Don M
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Re: You Might Be an Old Home Owner if...

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That's all cool; even older than some of mine!

phil
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Re: You Might Be an Old Home Owner if...

Post by phil »

jharkin wrote:
phil wrote:Ive got all the tools needed except a signal generator... but dont feel confident I'd be able to do it right without the specialist expertise.


fixing old radios often means finding or fixing old test gear but for one radio restoration you cna do a few things.

- do a recap and don't touch the allignment , often it is enough to replace capacitors to make it safe to play but allignment can often help if you follow the procedures properly. sometimes you get one where someone who didn't have a clue started turning screws ;-) but often alignment isn't necessary to make it work.

you can download a signal generator that will produce frequencies on your computer then rather than just hearing the tones you can connect your speaker lead to the radio to inject the frequency. look into how to protect your computer but basically I think if you just put it through a one meg resistor that should do it, or you could couple it through a little transformer of a few loops so it isn't really electrically connected since you only need a signal and not really a lot of power output. so with that method you can just generate signals with your computer.

you can pick up almost any electronic radio and that will display tunable frequencies and you can compare the frequencies of your test radio to the ones of the new and functional digital reciever.

if you look online you might find procedures you can use one radio to align another.

If you really get into it you can use more complicated methods to align a set by looking at the wave form but I'd advise to just replace the caps , make it safe and then see how it is.

sometimes you have to look further , most (all american five) radios use 455KHZ for the IF frequencies but sometimes that differs , often the schematics will include an alignment procedure. some old radios use different principles such as old TRF radios common about 1929 which don't even have IF transformers. Most radios after about 1930 were superhetrodyne radios.

there are circumstances where you might need to involve more troubleshooting such as when you run across a set that has failed IF cans or other strange issues but for the most part if you pick up a radio that used to work and recap it , most likely it will work and most likely the tubes are not the reason why it stopped working and most likely those alignment screws are extremely close to where they should be.

basically you are peaking the IF transformers to resonate at the intended frequency ( 455) then you can fiddle with the bandspread which gets the stations the right distance from each other along the dial and then adjusting so that for example AM 1200 shows at 1200 on the dial. one adjustment depends on the next so often you have to sort of walk the adjustments into tune. Don't start with playing with alignment though. and nothing wrong with leaving that or getting help when you are at that stage of the restoration.

often if you try to just plug in a radio that was sitting for years it will blow up the capacitors and the bang and smoke scares people and might take out the speaker field coil. if it plays the volume may fade in and out and it will hum these are classic examples of what a typical unrestored radio does. I never plug them in unless I check the capacitors first but often people do. if I acquire it as "sort of working" then I replace the caps and test after replacing every one or two as it is frustrating if you miswire something and then don't understand why it won't work.

be aware if you work on sets that are post war tabletops some of them are "hot chassis" and you can get a shock from the chassis. also often radios have crumbling insulation on the wires. It really is advisable to use an isolation transformer to power sets under test.

one bit of gear you can make up is a dim bulb tester and you can plug your radio in through that to bring the power up gradually. ( by changing bulb wattages) the idea is that you just take any lamp and cut one wire and hook the radio up to those two wires ( in series with the bulb) then even if the radio is a dead short it will light the bulb at full brightness rather than something like throwing the circuit breaker or worse.

The macintosh is highly sought after and valuable, I'm kind of drooling a little now.. ;-)

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jharkin
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Re: You Might Be an Old Home Owner if...

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phil wrote:
The macintosh is highly sought after and valuable, I'm kind of drooling a little now.. ;-)



he he he Drool away :)

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Picked this one up as a basket case almost 20 years ago and even then it cost nearly 4 figures (young and dumb). the lettering on the outside is all worn off but it has a duplicate serial number inside the chassis and from some site that had the production batches by serial range I was able to date it as a very early unit probably from fall 1961 production.

I rebuilt it completely on the dining room table of my first apartment after college, learning tube audio along the way. New silicone rectifiers (with added resistance to compensate for the old selenium), all new electrolytic in the power supply (had to rearrange and substitute values for the old multi-section cans), replaced every coupling cap and a bunch of the critical resistors in the input path that drifted using an upgrade kit from an outfit in Canada. New power tube set. Probably would test better than new with the amount of high end modern parts on the inside, but cosmetically it will never be a collector piece - all the silkscreening is gone and the chrome is only so-so.

Always wanted to get he matching C22 preamp but collectors have priced them out of my league now...
-Jeremy

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phil
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Re: You Might Be an Old Home Owner if...

Post by phil »

New silicone rectifiers (with added resistance to compensate for the old selenium)

one thing that selenium rectifiers did was that they didn't power up instantly. I have read about some who have a method of using some capacitors and resistors to somehow cause the power to ramp up. I don't know if that matters a lot, the theory was that the instant on power might shock the filaments but I have no idea if that holds water. It sounds like you did a great job of restoring it and glad to hear there is still one that didnt' get bought up by one of the rich collectors. I commonly see radios from about 1929 with '45 tubes and the price of the radio, so they end up either getting junked or with some other output tubes used. Does the Mac use 6L6? If it were mine I wouldn't sell it either ! it's an investment now

"drooling on my keyboard ;-) "

Phil

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