Missing AM Antenna visit • How one man stole the ... Fixing up a 90 year old radio having to use a hack or two to get this beauty going again. Some news and happenings in the commercial broadcast radio world / shango066
What happened at 33 minutes is nothing short of amazing. HDD magnets and a resistor, some WD 40 and 90 years is just giving the finger to newer stuff. I love this channel!
Yeah!!! 2 fingers to the throw away garbage they make now. The quality of everything has gone down hill. You don't use things 20 or 30 years anymore. Your lucky if anything last a few years now or gives you good service. Shame really...
You know, the 1930's is when the basics of modern society really fell into place. Radios became common in the 1930's. As did telephones, and electric lighting. Cars changed dramatically. 1920's cars resemble horseless carriages. You don't get into a Model T, you get on it, like a tractor. The 1930's had cars with enclosed cabins. And televisions existed by the end of the 1930's, as did movies with sound and color. All of these were primitive versions of what we still use to this day. And this all happened in spite of the Great Depression, and in spite of the Dust Bowl.
Your videos make it fun. I feel the same way about amateur radio. I am 71 years old and it is a great hobby foe me. I have no formal background in electronics but have learned from books and people like you that share their knowledge. After watching your videos I decided to to try repair a EICO 715. It is just an old piece of test equipment my dad and I used back in the 1970's when we were into CB radio. Wow did I open a can of worms. I had to find replacements for 1N56 germanium diodes. I did get all the functions working except for the modulation testing. I will go back to that at some point to see if I can figure that out. The worst part to working on it is that it is hand wired and stacked selector switches are used. Now I have great appreciation for the patience you have. Thanks for your videos.
Even more depressing than Soros buying 40% of these radio stations is the fact that his younger son is now in place to run the company. He is much more committed and has a lot more energy.
How beautifully simple were electronics back in the days... I have a 50s bulgarian radio from my grandparents which have permanent magnet speaker and a separate choke for the plate voltage LC filter.
Allied radio in Chicago sold kits under the house brand of knight-kits. They were headquartered in Chicago. I spent many happy hours in the store as a child many many years ago - so, yes, your signal generator and that radio are "related". Nice video. Lots of fun!
That will be a nice looking radio when it's refinished, it reminds me of my first radio restoration, it was around 1983 and was a 1938 Silvertone mantle radio. The inside of the radio was intact with all the tubes, but in those days, I knew nothing about how to get schematics, later finding out that every library had Riders manuals. I persevered looking at the tiny and faded schematic inside the cabinet. The field coil was blown, so not knowing the resistor trick, I completely unwound the field coil and removed the shorted section and rewound it with the remaining good wire. It took a long time but it paid off and that radio works to this day. It would be a much easier operation for me today because I have a bobbin winder, which would probably turn a job that took many hours to a couple of hours.
dave tipton had a speaker with a bad field coil and he managed to rewind it. he posted a video in the last few months doing it. it did look like a lot of trouble though, he used a chinese coil winding machine to do it.
This country is done for anyway. Stop worrying about it. All empires fall eventually. Do you want a good radio station? Do what I did when I wanted a good TV station: make your own. A raspberry pi can do this with ease.
Shango is a bit of a grandmaster of what I would call "freestyle repair" where he takes "calculated" risks and uses a lot of tricks of the trade he must have gathered in his long career... Most of them work too :) Hats off for his repair of this old-timer on the cheap but effective !
My guess would be that if he doesn't shut it all down, he'll add the stations to his propaganda machine to an even greater degree than they've already declined into.
@volvo09 Oh, he will. He passed the torch to his 38-year-old son. He’s just as bad or worse. His son is currently dating Huma Abedin-Hilary Clinton’s girlfriend and Anthony Weiner’s ex wife.
Mallory bias cell. You can put any one and a half volt small coin size battery in its place. Or if your adventurous there are ways to rejuvenate the cell by drilling a small hole in the side adding some liquid and sealing it. It is a cell that produces almost no current and the circuit demands almost no current. They got away from those in one or two years. Went to self-bias.
I keep hoping you'll attempt to repair the field coil. I would try. After all, it's put together with screws. Just unscrew it and look at it. The open area might be clearly visible and fixable. Or maybe not. But I've been happily surprised many times.
My dad fixed a Philco 20 by repairing an open field coil. The break was conveniently on the outside winding of the coil. That radio played for years after.
The stolen radio tower is a little less than 2 hours from me. The thing about the original news story that made me suspicious was that the tower had been supposedly gone without anyone knowing it, implying the station either wasn't operating or if it was, had no listeners that cared to call the station to report that it was off the air.
similiar thinking here....how do you take down a functional commercial transmitter and nobody notices?....it was a live station and the transmitter and antenna disappear, hunh?
It would, but that's desirable in this circumstance - the speaker has two coils, one with many windings used as the choke, and another with only a few windings to move the cone with audio. The effect is minimal, because of the soft iron core.
This Knight radio (model 98AE-184K) is the same as a Sentinel 98AE. The metal top-hat shaped bias cell can be replaced by a 1.5V watch battery with the negative side towards the output tube OR by a 4.7 to 6 Megohm resistor with a parallel .01uF capacitor across it. The original electrolytics were 8uF each so I wouldn't go over 16uF on them. Like your attack approach to individual leaky paper caps. It's why they must be all replaced. Even old tubes are cheap, if you need a new one and usually tested by most sellers with a good tube tester. They often brag about it for your decision making to buy it or not. 45 cents back then for a tube is worth $10 today, so you are doing good. Too bad the 6G5 eyetube was so weak but there is a 1Meg resistor in the tube socket that can go really high in value and cause dimming even in a newer replacement tube. Your tips at the end are very much appreciated Shango. Great video! Steve from IL
If you could get a couple big donut magnets like RadioShack used to sell you might be able to carefully take apart the speaker and replace the field coil with them, but it will be tricky to get it aligned so the voice coil doesnt rub.
I really enjoyed watching that . What a lovely old radio .I would enjoy restoring the cabinet finish. Sir you have the best channel on you tube !! Best wishes from the UK .
If you believe for one second that modern mechanical hard drives are more reliable than the old ones I got some bridges I'd like to offer you!!!!! I've worked in the industry for decades and they have gotten less and less reliable over time. Also, you can open these and they will still work, but you have to torque them down to the right specs or they will never work again. When I was college, I had a class that had a hard disk with a transparent case. The problem is if you don't use a clean room, it is near impossible to keep particles out of the case when you open it.
I always wonder about magnetization of the pole piece. Were they originally magnetized? Surely it may happen over time. I also understand that these electromagnetic speakers can be damaged by reversing the polarity of the field coil. Seems odd, but that's what I've been told.
@@MichaelWysocki-ks5xt I have had good luck feeding cleaner down the shaft for sealed pots. It creeps well, and patient application w a Q-tip will reach the wipers and strip in a minute. Rest evaporates.
@@jdmccorful That can be an advantage, it might be the perfect size to replace the coil with them, if you stuck like 6 or 8 magnetron magnets on top of each other.
@@jdmccorful I don't think they would be heavier, it is probably lighter because most of the coil is copper, which is very heavy. It looks to me if you remove those two screws, the bracket falls apart and you can remove the coil and install the magnets. If there's a gap, just wedge a sheet of steel in it. But one important thing (apart from the matching size) is the direction of the magnetism. I don't know if magnetron magnets are magnetized as the two flat surfaces are the two poles, or one half circle is one pole and the other half circle is the other pole. You need the two flat surfaces as the two poles, as that's what matches with the field the coil makes.
21:13 Sticking the magnet on the back will not give magnet field close to original sensitivity. The efficient fix is to take off the field coil magnet bracket, put a round flat neodymium magnet on the edge of the core and secure it with glue. The next step is to put the bracket back, but with couple of steel washers and longer screws. If the neodymium magnet did not fall off the core during this process, the speaker should work and look almost original.
@26:30 - If anyone cares, you can soak the magnet assemblies in acetone overnight and in the morning, carefully pry/slide the magnets off the brackets. They bite your fingers a lot harder when the brackets are gone. You have been warned.
Ah, I wondered how that glue could come off. I pried a bunch of but it's hit or miss if you break the magnet or peel off the nickel / whatever coating is on the outside.
That came out quite nicely, especially considering the fact that you had to guess at the IF frequency. I would replace the speaker with a vintage PM one that has roughly 3.2 ohms impedance, that's what these old sets like. I built a little box a while back that I use with all of my vintage radios/phonos. Basically it's a wall outlet box that has a light switch, and outlet, and a 1 amp slo-blo fuse. And yes, j-hook for the win---I just don't see the point in stressing the lugs on old tube sockets
About those 30s eye tubes, they were only meant to last about 1200 hours (later as the tech advanced they were making 6E5s in the 70s that were closer to 1800 hours- those have a glow that looks more blue-ish in hue). 1200 hours is about 3-4 years of use if the radio was going to played about 1 hour per-day after the original purchase. The 6U5/6G5 and 6E5 are "for all practical purposes" interchangeable in most applications. But the 6E5 moves faster with the same trigger, and on really strong stations may overlap itself in the closed position. If you can live with seeing that happen when tuning into local 50 kw flamethrowers, there's no harm in using the more common 6E5. Now the soviet 6E5 is electronically the same as the American 6E5, but it uses a different base so the substitute for those requires making an adapter. Btw you can tell this isn't a Philco because it has an eye tube. Philco hated RCA's control over radio patents in the 1930s, and intentionally refused to ever use eye tubes as a form of petty-revenge (instead their high end sets got shadow meters). Philco & Zenith also tried, for as long as they could get away with, to force consumers to use G & GT tube types because metal tubes were an RCA innovation. They employed all kinds of tactics to discourage using metal tubes... like having tube shields that slide onto rivetted-on receptacles shaped so metal tubes can't fit through them to plug into the socket, or not grounding pin1 (needed for the metal types' shields) etc.
Oh my favorite kind of radio! AM/SW tube set. I do like that dial string assembly where it just comes off as a unit and you can repair it on the bench. Looking forward to updates on this one. I live about 30 miles from the radio tower that " was stolen". Lol. That place has been off the air for years on AM. Another great video. Might get me motavated to work on one of mine. Thanks!
@LyonsArcade There are plenty of videos asking illegals for whom they will vote. They know the democrats won't say anything about their illegal status and will give them free stuff on the taxpayer dime. They plan on voting for them.
Those were kits, you could buy them from Allied Radio. My neighbor gave me a bunch of their books when I was a kid bc I loved to look through them, hoping one day to build my own. These days I can say I have done that and thank my neighbor who is no longer with us. He was my Mentor.
Very good video I just have one question that I know someone on here can answer. I watched this video twice and what is Shango trying to do with the magnets on the speaker? I couldn't tell any difference and that is an eerie sound.
@@shango066 After reading your response to my question Shango I watched your video on my TV instead of my phone and yes there is definitely a difference in loudness. Thank you sir you do amazing work!
You can use the primary of almost any power transformer (secondary disconnected) as a choke. Also, HDD magnets are usually hexapolar - looking at the arc, along the top are NSN, and along the bottom are SNS. So when that type of magnet is attached to a ferrous metal, each of the polar pairs is pulling against its opposite neighbor through the base metal.
@@janosnagyj.9540Swinging chokes have air gaps, and yes their function is more effective than a 'regular' choke, especially when dynamic changes in the load are expected. But outside of a few specialty applications, 'ordinary' iron-core chokes were used. In this application, the difference would be negligible.
My bet is 460 KHz for the IF based upon radios I have experienced with that have chassis like this, but could be anything- I never specifically worked on a Knight this old!
I wonder if it be better to get a neodymium magnet in a cylinder form and please that on the front on the stud that runs through the middle of the coil of the speaker. Still fun video to watch and the only thing I can say there is 1 wrong way to do this, when you do it in a way that it becomes dangers. any other way is fine.
Never heard of a gimmick capacitor before. Looked it up. Its a real thing. Love learning new things like this. Sorry to hear Sauron is taking over a lot of your radio stations. I can't see anything but bad coming from that. He's not a good person.
you'd need to put a permanent magnet in the same position as the field coil for it to work properly, between the speaker frame and the u shaped bracket, maybe magnet off a dud microwave magnetron?
So many people have no clue. Pure evil going on in this world, soon we'll have to confront reality. Love the radio repair vids, I've been collectingntube radios & need to get them all going also.
Shango, I watch most of your videos but never post a comment. I totally agree about what you said about the old man from Hungary. I have made similar comments about him and other similar behavior about the destruction of the core of this nation, and I got an immediate warning about my "comments".
57:30 Could that capacitor be there to cushion any voltage spikes from the field coil that might occur when the power is cut abruptly, or if a tube pin opens? I could imagine an inductor that big doing some damage. The capacitor would absorb a spike in that position, but I would think a bigger one from B+ to ground would accomplish the same thing.
Yes the big SCSI drive magnets take me back! WAY back when I used Apple computers more seriously I had a 'Mac II fx' connected to 5 of those giant scsi drives I got at a tech surplus flea market for next to nothing. VERY fast and cheap for the time!! Not that I expected much of that setup with an 030 processor, lol And of course they didn't last long after being used! The head amps failed one by one. Now I just have the crazy-powerful magnets and a spindle completely filled with just platters, no space in between.
That thing that looks like a small metal top hat is a 1.5 volt bias cell. In direct-heater tubes or before they developed negative grid bias from cathode current bias cells were used to keep the grid slightly negative. There is almost no current drain and I bet it still tests a little voltage.
A mark of a good technician is making something work without a schematic and not letting too much smoke out. Koodos. You working on this old set makes me want to break out one of a dozen sets I have that need restoring, but I have too many irons in fire right now.😅 Granted ...this may be (or most likely will be) a shelf queen and not a daily driver anyways, but did all of the resistors check within tolerance and in your opinion will you need any voltage drop to 110? Enjoyed the show!
I guess you could experiment substituting that field coil by a coil out of a contactor, an old school relay that could be disassembled, or a solenoid from an irrigation valve. Just find one that fits in there and see what happens.
Kars for kids one of the worst, most deceptive charities out there. Most of their revenue goes for advertisement. Nobody ever asks what do they do? According to charity watch only one child outside the New York New Jersey area ever got any money. Give your car to a charity that will keep the money at home and help kids in your local area.
Incandescent light bulbs are not easy to get now and I will be needing to get replacement bulbs for my Dim Bulb Setup. My rig uses 2 x 200 W, 2 x 100 W, 2 x 60 W and 2 x 15 W which is modelled on Paul Carlson's setup. These bulbs have uses other than providing domestic lighting.
looks like the 80 mfd cap you was ranting about was leaking literally there is an oval of difference in color. i would be leary about using lithium cells in tube radios because if something went wrong you are just begging to have a fire.
That Radio is the same as a Sentinel Radio corp. set model 98AE, Riders volume 10, 10-27 to 10-28. Also appears Allied A9741 Chassis 72A is good match. The odd thing is a 1.5v bias cell.
Does anyone remember the gas shortages of the 70's ? I worked at a gas station in Los Angeles and I remember people taping "cow magnets" to the fuel line of their car, so that the fuel molecules would become "straightened out" and give more MPG. Maybe somebody smarter than me can explain the science of this.
Imagine, a 10 year old experienced Abraham Lincolns assassinated in 1865, then at 80 could have listened to this radio, and traveled by airplane, and automobile. Wow, seeing a complete change in technology in thier lifetime.
It is fun to rewind a field coil. You should give it a try! Also, that thing that looks like a diode is a bios battery. It, of course, has no voltage today. Also, I would try 175 KC. Older Philcos used 175 back in the1930s (See Philco 90 schematic); assuming Philco made it. If you share the tube line-up, we might be able to find the schematic for it.
I was wondering if I use my Heathkit capacitor leakage tester to energize the field coil in one of these old field coil speakers for testing, if that would be enough current to power the electromagnet. Have to try it and see. limited current though a 6X4 damper type rectifier for sure.
Shango was getting *dangerously* political at the beginning of his video. Google is watching. The subject of boiling electrons is controversial enough, in my opinion.
Shango, great video but you're not reading your ohmmeter correctly. For example, you read a resistor as 480 ohm, but it was actually 480 KILOHM.....the volume control you read as 471 Kilohm, but it was actually 471 MEGohm. so you might be misled !...regards Nick
When I worked in a radio repair shop in the 80's, the one thing I could never do is replace the dial string. I left that for Walter to do. (He owned the place.)
The older eye tubes will fail due to degradation of the phosphor screen coating, independently of emission. As far as I know, the lifespan of the earlier tubes were particularly bad. Newer ones from the 50-60s supposedly have a different phosphor coating which lasts much longer.
Would really like to see another one of those desert find tv ressurection vids. The ones where they look completely baked / beyond repair and you somehow manage to breathe life back into them .
neo magnet on the back of the old speaker works great. modern headphone speakers like 20-40mm usually have the rare earth in them. they are usually glued on the back so just knock them off with a hammer
