Well I have to report that both radios are still working great and they are in my collection of radios that I rotate around to keep everything working. They both are good AM dxers and work well on SW if you tune very carefully. Especially with an external antenna on SW. Still lots to listen to on SW. I glued the centers back in the knobs so they look nice. Great tip about keeping the power switch on with the batteries out. I'll start doing that on all my radios. Thanks again Shango and a great (I especially think) video! Ted
@@directcurrent5751 Either better antenna or you need to get away from local noise sources, like the ubiquitous switching power supply. That may mean going on battery power and getting out of the house.
Yep,, you had to be very careful and even then it was nastyl. The dead bugs that died from it you sure didn't feed the chickens either. If you did, you had dead chickens. I learned the hard way when I was a kid.
Great switch work! Another option is to use a tiny twist drill and carefully bore a hole of the wafer between the contacts. Be sure and use a vacuum to keep the shavings out. Use naphtha dripped into the hole and agitate the switch. This softens and cleans out the old grease. Next flush with switch cleaner and use a Deoxit with some lube action. I've revived poorly stored switches this way. Just a suggestion to consider for other projects.
Scratchin' in 2022 from the 60s. As I said in a comment before joining this channel this was my first SW radio, at 10. Took me a few years to find another so this is just gold to me. It too had low volume. Nearly broke my finger hitting the screen of the phone to 'Buy Now', I've never seen the manual, so this goes into my collection of saved videos. Hiversum Holland around 7MHz was my first DX and that Fine Tune (it drifts the local osc) is very nice for a bargain radio of its day.
One quick fix , that for sure did not always work, is spray as best you can into whatever hole or crevasse you can find then apply 45 watt soldering iron with switch open . Then move contact rapidly while still hot. Heat can soften grease and might even vaporise it off . Wiping action you noted can then push old dry grease off. Again not a perfect fix but it is quick.
I vote for disassembly of pots and switches... I would say those sprays might work quickly but the problem will come back with the same speed as well. Only thorough cleaning and re-greasing will work for the long run!
I began my journey in electronics on tubes in the 70's and we new digital was upon us and consumer electronics were about to be a throwaway industry. I have really enjoyed what you do and already learned alot. Correct me but you seem to start with what is not working and make decisions based on vast experience, a little touching, tapping, maybe looking for hot components. I suppose , every case is different when we break out the divide and conquer rule. As in, take some measurements, dont get me wrong, I totally appreciate what you throw out there and the edgy comments are fantastic. What is the sweatshirt you are wearing/ A RUG? Go to the store and buy a sweatshirt man.
Thank you for letting me know about leaving the switch on for storage. I learned something. I do take the batteries out and now I learned to leave it on
that smell like the no pest strips of the 1970's? I remember that smell. Another interesting video!! 👍 I knew about taking batteries out of things not being used. I didn't know about keeping the switch closed. And I also did not know about the lawn mowers. I learned a couple things today!
Taking apart the switch wasn’t for nothing. You showed that it was a relatively simple process that even a person like you could do it. And , that’s better than talk… any day.
Those general electric radios were made specifically for the military and not for civilian or to be sold in the PX. Those were specially prepared for long-term storage. Many times that type of storage bag was lined with copper or aluminum foil to reduce the chance of EMP. What was the real reason for the special preparation? Who knows, it's the military. 😁
I have a NIB one of these GEs too and had the same problem with the power switch, both sets of contacts in it were measuring in the megaohms when closed. I filled a short little cup with mineral spirits and set the chassis down so that just the top half of the switch soaked in the cup for several hours. After a few dozen turns on and off, I was surprised it actually worked, both now measure 0 ohms.
The oxidation of the contacts is to be expected from something that’s been sitting unused for decades,the tuning capacitor being left unscrewed was GE’s fault though.
@shango066 Nice work on the switch repair on the first radio! I wouldn’t have the patience for that. The second radio’s switch only needed to have its constituency transubstantiated. Well done!
Pretty nice looking radios, glad to see you got 'em working. I guess the shortwave band was for soldiers serving overseas to catch VOA b'casts. Thanks very much.
Hurray for risk/reward discussion on changing working electrolytics in this application. It depends; they work, ESR in tolerance, aren't going to destroy anything, replacement could do collateral damage to a working radio. Very sensible. Thanks
The military contractors used chlorine well after it was banned. They used a fog machine to fog warehouses. My dad was in the pest control business, we only used it for termite for public...but he sprayed everything on our farm with it.
I got one of these NOS in the box radios years ago. Mine had a Dept. of Civil Defense stamp on the box. Surprisingly, it worked fine one I got it out of the bag and tried it.
In the UK wireless restoration community, those chrome/brass knob inserts that fall off or get dinged are called brights. It kinda means any nice metallic trim, but I don't know a better word.
It is a good switch pot! I think even when contacts don't 'wipe' it can be better to spraying then not. (as long as the spray doesn't destroy anything near by, which is rare in my experience thus far). The spray could break up/ loosen hard deposits so the contacts can then crush it, maybe it falls off.
I also bought one from Omaha's surplus. Works just fine and mine doesn't smell at all. It has bad reception anywhere in a building unless you attach it to another antenna.
GE made good radios, besides having a fine tuning control mainly for SW, there appears to be a ratio drive in the tuning knob to dial pointer., making the tuning in of a station more precise.
29:07 while having two radios together you should try tuning in both radios to the same sideband frequency so that they would be able to be clear.👍also, the radio service manual says to slip two strings behind the tuner knob to pull it off. Thanks You for your videos 🔧👍
Good work. It's always hard to repair mint condition old stuff without damaging something. It's been ages since I've seen a product which uses C batteries.
Have worked on those Clarostat switches before. There is a version of those where the wafer board with the contacts does not come apart for disassembly. In my case, the switch spring disintegrated from rust so needed a new switch. Two years of waiting till I found one on the ebay...
I've had good luck cleaning contacts on switches and relays like that using 24V AC and a solenoid. the voltage is high enough to break through the oxide and the inductive kickback is pretty good about blowing the crap off. obviously disconnect the switch from the circuit before doing this.
I've gone reverse in time to catch all of the roundies. My favorites are roundies CRT sets. It was a great time for consumer electronics. The circuits seemed more sensible and practical in that time.
As far as I know, the treatment with pesticide should also prevent mold growth, so it made perfect sense to spray these radios with it, especially if they were intended to be stored in a bunker
Hey Shango, thanks for the great video! Do you have a video where you show how you made your battery pack with the current limiting bulb? Thanks, and take care!
I'm just as cynical as you are, but wow, you drift in and out of acerbic sarcasm like Dr. Smith Lost in Radio Space! ;-) This video is tangentially meaningful for me as it is similar to your previous videos concerning the P-990 World Monitor radios that were so helpful and enlightening in my effort to raise mine from the dead.
Is that the same pesticide that was used for the "Shell No Pest Strips" with the yellow plastic inside a box? I recall getting that stuff on my hands as a child. Probably why I'm a little stupid today ;-)
Hi Shango you have a lot of experience on small pocket germanium transistor radios. I am trying to isolate distortion in a small 3" reel to reel tape recorder. It has a 4 transistors germanium amplifier that works on 6volts. I'm thinking a bad crystal mic. I looked at it several times already on and off when I can at where I work. Its my own personal and I'm too tired to work on it when I'm home. I have to keep boss happy first and repair the TVs first. I never had such a simple little devel kick my butt. These little tape machines are terrible for sound anyway but I think it can do better. The play/record head does not have a ridge and I cleaned it. It has new capacitors. It has dc bias and I thought that is why it sucks but I listen to other machines with dc bias and they sound much better. The bias voltage is 130mv on record close to what my other one has that sounds better but its a different brand. If I take an audio signal from a radio earphone Jack and couple it to the play head with the radio volume on very low it comes out clean from the tape recorder speaker after adjusting the radio volume control so not to overdrive the amplifier input. The same amplifier is used for record so I don't think it's the amplifier. If I record then playback it sounds like the audio is chopped up fast like a scratchy throat or like a transistor is biased too low. I been repairing a lot more complicated things than this and they work. I even work on high end reel to reel machines and they sound great but this little devel!!!! I like a challenge. I remember when I was about 8 years old I used to play with these but every one of them played good when they were new for about one year then got distorted then finally won't record at all but would play. Every one did that they would lose ability to record but play fine. I hooked up a function generator to the mic input and applied a one kilohertz sine wave and it can record a steady one kilohertz sine wave with no distortion on the oscilloscope but has sort of a funny looking ramp distortion with crossover distortion at around 400hz. I remember when I got my first cassette recorder it was when the cassette beat out the little 3" reel to reel. Same dc bias, same germanium amplifier but for some strange reason it blew away the little three inch machine in sound quality and lasted much longer than one year. I've been tempted to convert it to silicone transistors and re bias. Maybe germanium has weird defects at certain low frequency when they're bad
I have the AM only version of this model with the leather case that takes the big 9v battery it's nice when they use standard battery s you can still buy
One old trick for bringing corroded contacts back to life in switches and relays where it's too hard to get at the contact points is to isolate them electrically and feed a higher voltage to them and then activate.. The higher voltage is more 'willing to conduct' the arc - spark will clean the contacts up a bit.
Let's talk about Chlordane... Saturday afternoons my parents and I would go to the summer "camp". Mum would stock the food, dad would mix 2 drinks. One w/ scotch on the rocks and another w/ Chlordane in a watering can. If a little extra scotch was good, than 3 times the recommended dose of Chlordane was better. Our camp always had a whitish haze around the foundation. I was 10 and play all around. I did not finish high school, but now in my late sixties, seem to be fine. (Maybe not, I watch shangoO66)
One way to not lose anything when taking these switches apart is to take it apart in a clear plastic bag so if anything goes flying, you won't lose it.
Maybe you can send the bag out to a lab for a chemical analysis. Whatever you were smelling,it sure didn’t keep mold from growing inside the box or on the manual.
Good going Mr Shango. Did I see right, the dial has a geared vernier? If yes, where? Those sealed switches can be a true pain, I have always had success with filling them with a very light oil such as petroleum or kerosene and waiting a few days. The light oil softens the hard grease so it can then be flushed ot with brakecleen or contact cleaner.
I had the same problem with a Vanguard 888. I did the same thing you did with the pot and it never did work. That pot was no fun putting back together.
17:25 Driving a service van I can attest to the tendency for threaded fasteners to unscrew due to vibration. I've used a thin double sided PC Board between battery terminals to measure current. It would also be an easy way to add a wired switch in place having jumpered the internal switch. Thin wire hanging out the battery cover or wherever advantageous. Atkelar, another RU-vid'r takes EVERYTHING apart. I've never seen anything like it. His results are compelling. I wonder about his fail rate and what kind of difficulties are encountered replacing controls and meters and whatever else doesn't take kindly to disassembly. I'm not sure I could, possibly ever in my lifetime, do some of what he has done. Too meticulous. And I'm just a brute. Lack adequate patience. I also don't know how some of these things are constructed. No doubt in my mind that switches and controls disassembled, contacts cleaned and burnished, and proper lubrication provided will yield superior results. You did great!
Reminds me , when I was a kid, of my slightly demented neighbor ( in a nice way) who would blow resisters for fun. Now if you could only lower your gas prices, decide to get rid of Newsom, then the Sun would shine.
If it was just tarnish, I would have suggested unsoldering the connections and making it switch a higher voltage, like 24 volt to puncture the tarnish.
silver oxide is a good conductor ( white in color) but tarnished silver is bad, silver sulfide, ( black in color) and even though sulfur is a tiny part of the atmosphere, blackened silverware is the reason for polishing and occurs reliably over time.
I found an old restaurant employees manual from the 1950’s,in it amongst the tips on personal grooming stating that employees must have clean shaven faces at all times as well as short,nicely combed hair,it lists that the countertops,screen doors and other areas likely to come in contact with flying insects ants should be “liberally treated with a solution that contains DDT”.
I wouldn't say dead. It's in hibernation. One day this old tech communication will help civilization rebuild if we have something worth rebuilding. I am very optimistic so keep us learning and feed our brains with old tech knowledge.
With a 1964 contract date, probably made for Civil Defence fall out shelters In the 1960s lots of shortwave stations on the air. Today not many Google shortwave info.... Lists of many stations on the air
Nowadays there are few foreign language broadcasts left on shortwave but plenty on the AM band. A lot of people have "skipped" over here. No xenophobia intended, just an observation.
17:28 of course the one cap that doesnt just fall off you need to destroy to get to the screw. the rubber gromets looked compessed like the tuner was mounted. Maybe these were treated for the tropics and were in a ship? something shook them out
I don't know if it would work in your situation but I have had some luck putting bad switches in an ultrasonic cleaner. The fluid i have used varied from Mr. Clean to IPA
I have kind of an off-topic question that maybe could be answered by someone here. If I can improve FM radio reception (eliminate static) by holding my hand on the telescopic antenna, how might I mimic the effect without me holding the antenna? I assume that I am acting as a capacitor of some sort. The radio is an old Aiwa CA DW9 boombox that has phenomenal sound, and nothing I do or connect to the rear antenna screws has as good an effect as my hand on the antenna. There has to be some scientific answer/solution. And BTW, recapping the thing is out of the question as I do not have the skills, plus I started taking the thing apart, and the boards are behind several walls, and taking it apart would be akin to taking the Space Shuttle apart. Thanks in advance for any logical answer.
Unsolder the wires on the power switch and apply 600volts regulated current from a capacitor leakage tester !!!on the switch not the radio!!! I used a sencore LC51. Not the best way to fix a switch its the lazy way. I wonder how long it would work
15:48 & a few other places .. those "peened-over" pot cases are an absolute arse to open up and put back together again, I have an oil-filled LOPT (flyback) which I had rewound for me which needs the same treatment to close the bloody thing up again.
In eastern part of Europe there is a pоlish made or trade by a polish company silicone grease with microscopic PET antifriction balls in it for old mechanical parts of electronic equipment - works well. I'm sure there must be an american equivalent of this grease compound.
According to WP, chlordane has a half-life of 30 years. While ther might be some of it left, you probably smell plastic that aged (hence decomposed) in confined and air-restricted space, and is probably chlorine-based as well.
