It seemed to work well with the 50C5. What I really like about that radio is the 35W4 rectifier instead of a selenium rectifier so common in AM/FM sets of that era. I have two vintage radio pet peeves; replacing a selenium rectifier especially in a AC/Battery set as you have to get the current limiting resistor spot on and the other pet peeve is dial restringing.
If you tested that 35C5 as a 50C5 and it tested shit, then it was REALLY shit! Also with a 50C5 in the set, all the other tubes would be running a bit cold, might explain why the IF tubes acted weak.
Selenium rectifier are extremely annoying to work on, the most trouble I had was with a transformerless wire recorder: the way it was designed allowed for a huge voltage drop of around 30v when it was rewinding. I ended shielding the tubes from a possible fire and leaving it in as it was working fine. When it comes to simpler devices, I bought a few power potentiometer: when the correct value is found I go to my local electronic store and buy the fixed resistor equivalent.
My father was a machinist but his true love was electronics and he fixed radios and TV's on the side. He died when I was nine. Seeing your test equipment and you working takes me back to another time.
I love the sound of those old tube radios. One of the best sounding sets I ever had was a dump ground find back in the mid 1960's. It looked a bit like the coming component sets but was mono, and had speaker out jacks. So I had been collecting speakers out of junk cars at the dump, I loved the sound of those large speakers meant to blast radio over the top of road noise and the roar of the huge V8 engines of the era, so what I did was to wire up several of those car radio speakers along with a few taken from busted radios and televisions, someone had told me to attach some caps along the lines and I experimented till I had a wonderful mellow tone and very sharp highs then mounted the speakers on some particle board that had cutouts for each speaker. I mounted that board over an old small bookshelf so it looked a bit like a tombstone radio, and the AM receiver/amp combo fit right on top. There was an input for a record player on the set which I had hooked to an RCA 45 RPM record deck, heck the old radio even had a switched power out for the record player. That was the set that was playing the DOORS "Hello I Love You" whilst I had my first experience with the girl next door. Funny how one always remembers that first time so vividly. I had an old shack behind the house that was once a gainery, I had finished the walls with sheet-rock recovered from an old house we tore down, there was an old bed stored in the shed that I sat up, then my home built hifi, lighting was from an old 6 volt headlight that my girlfriend had painted red hooked to my old transformer from my electric train, in the next room we had a living room with a couch easy chair and an old TV, for an antenna I hooked wire to an old bed-spring on the roof of the shed, worked great for the 2 channels we got in town. Ah man those were the days. I last saw the girl next door at her mom's funeral some 8 years ago. She had not aged well, and was walking with the aid of a walker. Her hair was strangely and reached down below her ass, looked as though she had never combed it. Her husband was obviously a tweaker no teeth, dark circles around his eyes that sort of thing. Ah well, when I knew her, she was a young fresh girl of 16, as was I. It was magic, but the magic has gone for ever.
What really strikes me about that set is just how high-hour, high mileage it is. All of the tubes failing, crumbly traces and bad solder joints----that set used to play for hours every day, probably for decades. But you gave it a new lease on life, so hopefully it'll be around for decades more.
I don't even let my new stuff stay connected to the grid over night. When i go away i disconnect all connections leading outside. This was a great sat morn repair vid.
were just going to ingore that dead spider there and as for the smell well that's just age now you want to grab your 9 inch screw driver and lightly very light poke around
You're right pointing out the importance of the IF cap values being crucial to a receiver's top performance. Most hobbyists, beginner's are probably unaware of what resonance is all about.
I really love these videos, its so relaxing to watch and you can learn a thing or 2 about electronics from these old radios ...I feel like if you know how one of these tube radios work you have a foundation to understanding todays more complicated stuff, its real brain food
I had that radio model but in a cheaper plastic case when I was a kid. My Aunt gave it to me when she learned I didn't have a working radio in my room. It worked great, I can still remember listening to the Padre's Platters program,a priest who spun the latest rock and roll records on KFYR Bismarck ND, great rock intermingled with a bit of God just to keep us straight! They do generate heat, the back of the radio pretty much melted into a wrinkled mess but the old radio kept on playing. Mind didn't have FM on it either, but was the same brad if I remember right. Thanks for the great videos I do enjoy them a lot! KE0JBL
Nice work! Interesting all the equipment you use to diagnose and fix a radio. As radiotvphononut would say "It ought to be good for another 30 or so years!"
You know you are in the sticks when you live in an area with NO FM radio service. Well we are being promoted from the STICKS to near the STICKS, we get our very own FM station here! It will be on the air in MAY! Woohoo, I wonder what sort of programming we will get. We have had an AM station since 1966, it plays country during the day and rock at night.
WOW fireworks on Aug 15th, why if it were two years newer, I would say they were celebrating my and my good wife's 50th Anniversary! I can't believe it I have lived so long!
00:51:03 A surprisingly gentile yet great cleaner is 409. I use it to get adhesive residue off of VHS tape boxes, which are printed glossy cardboard. Just dampen the rag instead of spraying directly. You could seal the smelly patina with some clear coat too. I have used towels dampened with 409 to 'blot' clean fabrics like the grill of that radio. 409's antibacterial aspect helps with the smell as well, I have had great luck with spraying and spreading on untreated, or absolutely blasted or faded wood finishes without ill effect or lingering smell of the product. Kind of like an instant, quick drying, less nourishing murphy's wood soap.
Shango, a 12BE6 and a 6BE6 tube failing like the one in the radio you were working on in this video is actually quite common, I've been working on restoring antique/vintage tube radios since I was about 12 years old and I'm 30 now and the most commonly failed tube in the AA5 radios that I've worked on was either a 12BE6, 6BE6, 12BA6 or a 6BA6 tube the least commonly failed tube in my experience on AA5 Radios was the rectifier tubes or the output tubes. I'm currently working on restoring a 1950 Capehart Model 1002F that I got from a flea market that I traded two mid grade stereo receivers that I fixed up for. Interesting thing is that in my Capehart radio just about every single tube tested nearly dead, all three IF Amp tubes (6SK7s) tested bad (It works ok with them in there but the FM Band looses half its volume after about 5 minutes of playing the Phase Inverter tube (its a push-pull 6V6 amplifier) which is a 6SQ7 measures pretty bad as well, and I had to replace a couple of the tubes associated with the FM band on the radio as well (which were Noval tubes, one was a 6BE6, go figure) because the FM band wasn't coming in very well. As for the 17C9 tube you dealt with in this radio, its just a 17 Volt version of the 6C9 tube which is a common tube used in tube FM Stereo Multiplex Circuits, in fact I have a 1962 Sears Silvertone AM/FM Stereo Multiplex Reciever model 3025 that used a 6C9 in the multiplex circuit.
I wonder how many times that radio has played Along Comes Mary.....and all those other incredible songs....they sound amazing on one of these old units.
Arvin... that's it! My great grandmother had an Arvin sitting on her kitchen counter for years. I remember asking for it when I was 8 or something, she said "it's going to my kids first." It probably got sold at the unapproved estate sale that my crazy great aunt put on without anyone else knowing. Looking at pictures online, I think hers was a 63R58 or thereabouts.
When I work on old radio and audio equipment don't ask me when it will be done, and don't ask me how much it will cost. You'll know when and how much when I call and let you know it's done. And I agree with you 100% about safety concerns. Every old radio is a fire and shock hazard. Most AA5s are unfused anyway, and most earlier sets ditto. Shut it off and pull the plug when you leave the room.
there was a range of sets here in the uk on a pcb similar to that, made by Thorn under brands Ferguson, HMV, Marconi, which suffer from dry joints, track breaks and split IF core slugs!
ackshally ( pardon my bugs bunny bronx english) I hate da stuff over time i get ear infections when eat it regularly. had a burger king whopper,yesterday, been about a year since the last one maybe a tunyfish with celery & vinegar. hate mayo.
I have a 1960 era RCA console stereo I need to repair at some point. It's been in the family since it was bought new, no cigarette infusion, just bad caps and needs an alignment.
gotta love that ciggy smell smells so good, the more pungient it is the better the smoker, if its lighter smelling then eh it was light ciggy's or one of those only smoked a few a day, if it kinda high but not yellowed that a smoker that smoked to relax and if its yellowed and smells very powerfully that's your 3 packets a day party smoking chain smokers annonamus smell that's the one i like, yes i'm odd
I dislike those guys. Cars go to the junk yard for a coupe hundred bucks. You get to take book value off of your adjusted gross income up to the limit. It doesn't equate to much tax savings. Give your car to your local community center or your church. They'll give it to someone who needs it to get to work.
The best cleaning solution I have found for these type of smoked up devices is plain rubbing alcohol, my daughter gets boxes of prep for her injections, she only uses one a week, so she donates a box ever month or so of prep swabs. Man do they work great, so far I have yet to wipe off a silk screen, and it also works great to clean the sneezes off laptop screens, a delicate job that can ruin the screen if the alcohol gets in the wrong place.
Absolutely fascinating! Fantastic video! I just discovered your channel and I plan to binge-watch every video you have. I've been wanting to learn electronics at this level for decades. Maybe now I can. I'm especially interested in electronics for music (e.g. tube amps), but am also fascinated and mystified by anything electronic, from vintage tube electronics, to vintage computers, to modern devices. Do you have a video or bio about how you learned? My philosophy is that everyone who is an expert was once a beginner who knew nothing, and therefore, if they can do it, I can do it too. I would love to hear about how you went from zero experience to where you are now. Thanks for a great channel and videos!
Nice job on the Arvin 32R43 Cig-A-Puff radio, above and beyond as usual. That tuner tube is nuts, I've never seen a 10 pin tube with a center electrode like that. BTW - did you mean to leave the leads so long on the new filter caps or did you cut them short after the video was shot?
I was just talking with my 92 year old father-in-law about the units you repair. He told me that he has a box of tubes from his old jobs repairing Tvs and radios, he has even built HAM radio units. He was wanting to see if you would be interested in this box of tubes.
"this is someones pride n joy or certental vaule radio" few moments later is bashing it with hand to get it to work yep that is pritty much how most ppl treat things, still at least the post office, (uk or usa btw?) did a good job on not destroying it
The 17C9 is a dual section TETRODE. I didn't think that anybody manufactured small signal tetrodes after the 1930s. I can see the main appeal of this tube to circuit designers; a single 17C9 (or its relative, the 6C9) could be used as a high input impedance RF amplifier and converter. The datasheet suggests this usage configuration. A front end built using dual section triodes would need two tubes to achieve high input impedance and stability; one tube would be a dedicated RF amplifier, using both of its sections in a cascode configuration.
Someone locally has a radio very similar to this made by Philips here in the UK, he stripped all the insides out and fitted a cheap chinese class D amp with a cheap chinese speaker, talk about stupid?!?
Same chassis as in my Sears Silvertone form the early 60's. Down to the common mode choke on the power input with the little crack across the top. In my case the 35C5 went gassy and burned the cathode resistor to the wrong value.
What is the song at 49:45 that sounds like "just has his six" than after that he changed the station than changed it back and you can hear something like "oh sna" or "go stand"? I know the song but don't know the name and it is driving me nuts!
You also can't second guess customer reaction to how much it will cost. About 3 years ago I dug my meter out of the mothballs and attended a console stereo for a customer down in the city. He is a customer from when I was in the electronics business 30 years ago. I looked over his console, which belonged to his late father. Intermittent open FWBR, so supply voltage was all over the place in this solid state set. The changer was seized from sitting. Needed filters at least. The "woofers" were 6 inchers, and the power transformer I could almost conceal in my closed fist. I told the customer he was looking at $300 MINIMUM to fix this thing. I suggested to him to give it a couple of weeks and think about it, and when two weeks was up don't get it fixed. Just not worth it. He said he would, and would let me know for the next time I was in town. He called a few days later and said he wanted it fixed. The next time I was in town I stopped by and grabbed the changer and chassis, and did the work, and brought it back the next time I was in town again on other calls. The bill was $350. And he paid happily, and I haven't heard from it since. Go figure.
I get it, sometimes all you have are those few items left from your loved ones; unless you're living paycheck to paycheck, sometimes the expense is worth it for the memories listening to it will bring back.
replacement of rectifrier tube 35w4 with 2 diodes with 10 ohm 1/4w resistor in series may reduce the heat greatly. 1 diode is for reducing the filament voltage
Re IF caps, the thing is the values became sort of standardised with coil makers. You would generally source your IF cans from the same 2 or three makers, but of course over the last 100 years there will have been thousands of variations, it's just the case that between say 1955 and 1970 most would fall into the 'standard' . It is common sense to do as Shango suggests and check em. Though of course the physics of the thing limits variation range.
You cant just use 100pf if you want to peak the if properly ,lots of enthusiasts don't understand how tank circuits operate nor do they understand resonance, I had to learn about it to become a ham operator, thanks for another informative vid
Awesome job fixing the radio :D that huge tube tester looked like a piece if art. Really neat looking :) "Praise Jesus while we impeach the president" lol its funny what you hear when you go through the stations :)
Wow reminds me of an old laptop I had, you could go along typing up something in Word, and suddenly the screen would go black. If I held the laptop up over my knee and slammed it down, it would come back. Poor little laptop lasted over a year that way, since I was in college on limited income, I had to use what I had. I am very surprised the hard drive kept working.
Great video as always but I'm quite a bit confused on the FM alignment portion of this video. Where are you taking that voltage measurement from? At 0.00 volts would it be picking up all the avaliable signal at that given location with little to no loss in the set? Very intrieging.
A Great job. I as other love the "warm" natural sound of tube radio. A Cheap China knockoff is $100. If you added a inline fuse (even though it never existed) would that mitigate a house fire? 👍
I wish my bedside transistor set had the ability to turn off the AFC. My favorite station is on AM and they have an FM translator. I have to still tune in on AM as the AFC will pull to a significantly stronger station. Of course even if I were to find a tube set like this with an AFC switch I would not use it. I don't think sleeping with a Dinosaur connected to the line (let alone running) is probably not a good idea.
Does anyone know anything about the value of Arvin Radios? I have a 72P88 that I need to get rid of because I am moving. I am not sure if I should throw it away or if its worth something.
It's not a dis or anything, ive seen them in a few of his videos the one with a ciggy butt hanging out of it's mouth lying on his car dashboard cracked me up :P definitely part of the @shango066 hallmark.
I don't know why you're not changing it all with a solid state at that point that's what I would do be a lot cheaper than buying tubes or replacing they owned my tubes and probably lost a lot longer cause like you said solid state is near bulletproof when it's converted from a tube socket connector
DAVID GREGORY KERR Most of those tubes are not made currently, in Russia, China, or anywhere else. But if you could find a 12BE6 or a 50C5 made by Sovtek, or Svetlana, yes it would probably work.
The Soviets never made tubes that were compatible with North American AC/DC sets, I think that they made some AC/DC sets in the former USSR but they used tubes of either a Soviet or a European design.
