Man does that old radio bring back memories. It was close to Christmas time in 1962. We had just moved off the farm and into a sort of split apartment, where mom, dad and my 2 sisters shared two rooms on the West side of the old ranch style house, then the land-lord, a very old man lived in the next two rooms, and my bed room was 1/2 of a bedroom on the East side of the house. We all shared the bath, and I shared my bedroom with a transient who had taken a job washing dishes at the Cafe where mom cooked. We moved to town so my 2 sisters could attend High School, I rode out to the country school with the teacher, who had to come through town to get to the old country schoolhouse. At any rate, I would have been 10 years old I guess, if memory serves. There had been this Christmas party at the Cafe where mom and my room mate worked, and it ran late. The adults were all very drunk, of course we children remained home as it would not have been right for us to attend. When all were settled down, my room mate and dad had a fight, and dad cold coked him then put him in bed. About twenty minutes later, my room mate shouted for me to wake up, so I did and turned on the bare bulb that served to light the whole room. He had slashed both of his wrists, I was a bit scared at seeing all that blood, and shouted across the house for dad to come. HE shouted back for me to shut the fuck up and go to sleep, but I persisted till at last he came across, seeing what my room mate had done, dad used my belt, and his to put tourniquets on the room mates arms, and slowed the spurting down to a mile flow. Dad sent my mom next door to call the police and ambulance since the building had no phone service. That was the last I saw of my room mate, they sewed him up then locked him in the City Jail until he could see the Judge. The Judge gave him a $500.00 fine, which was a LOT back in '62, then suspended the fine on the condition that my room mate catch the next train out of town and never return. What, you may ask, does this have to do with anything? Well my room mate had that very radio sitting on his dresser in our room, and we used to love listening to it. I wished I could have kept it, but the police officers came to the room and packed all his things into a box to leave town with him. Of course his radio was in much worse condition since he carried it with him in a duffel bag. Funny how a thing like that will bring back such memories. I did, however get the best Christmas Present that Christmas, I think Dad was trying to help me forget the whole mess, even though I kept sleeping in that room after they cleaned up the blood. I got a very nice "REAL SMOKING" electric train set, man that was cool, you put drops of oil down the smoke stack and the heat of the electric motor made it smoke, and a small piston puffed the smoke out the stack. Very cool for '62.
Probably the best radio restoration channel. I love the way when something smokes, he giggles, instead of using profanities heard on other RU-vid channels. I restore radios, and to get as good as this channel, I may change my attire, gotta try something to get this good!
That nut driver handle you used to tighten down the clamp on the 'lytics is BEAUTIFUL. What a treasure. Dear glasslinger... you are the most amazing engineer / technician / mechanically talented person I've ever seen.. in addition to my friend Joe, who builds robotics. But can he work with glass? No. Can he build a working vacuum tube? 'Fraid not! I'm a newly retired biomedical engineer - and I'm in awe of your knowledge and skills. Thank you for all the wonderful and educational work you do and share with the world
Well done you don't see many engineers spending much time cleaning the item they have just fixed.Reminded me back in the early 60s when I was an apprentice after fixing an old Echo or Ferranti TV I used to take the CRT out and clean the tube face and also the safety glass inside and outside, what a job that was. In those days most houses in Belfast had a small living room, and that was heated by a coal fire some TVsI could barely see a picture through the dirt.
Every time you put out a video i cant wait to sit down and watch it. Always great content. When i was a young lad an old man i made friends with taught me a lot about electronics repair. Sadly he passed away a year after i met him. I tinkered with electronics until i got my first computer then moved into software development. Been writing code for 25 years but want to get back into electronics. Vintage is my favorite though. Thanks so much for sharing your repairs with us.
What a talent!! I'm sure you could make a new rectum for Charlie McCarthy. Keep those great repair videos coming! It's good education plus we are saving a small part of the old world.
My favorite radio repair expert! I really enjoy watching you work, you are the best, thank you for ever single video you upload. Love this radio! Ron, Had to add in how much I appreciate learning about using a Simpson or Triplett analog meter to test capacitors, never knew this and it will be a big help in the future. Did notice that you needed to pull the cap out of the circuit but that’s alright. Thank you, Buddy
First you need to know what needs to be done, then have the tools and materials required, and finally the skills and experience to do it. Glasslinger has all three. Excellent viewing.
Awsome work as always, and lot of useful information. I want to send You a special thank for enlightening people about the capacitors, when they need to be changed and not.
Great Video. Reminds me of all the yard sale radio sets I gave my neighbor radio repair whiz to have a go at. A larger speaker like this has meant a better set to novice me.
That was high tech less than a century ago! Zenith made great stuff and the world of electronics has progressed scary fast, software-defined radios boggle my little brain!
Love your techniques and tricks to get these treasures going again! Gotta love Zenith! It sounds great. Thanks for the warnings about steel wool. Tin whiskers galore if you don't follow this advice!!
Your work room is just like mine. Everything in its place and a place for most everything. I specialise in valve amplifiers as there is no one left to repair them. We are last of a breed.
great video as always :-) BTW - I have replaced the batteries in my old cordless drills with Lithium (18650s from old laptop batteries) and very impressed with the results. You can get a balance charger on ebay for around $20
Great video! I've never seen that model before but what a great idea to use the battery tube lineup to keep it from being an oven. Too bad they didn't have a battery pack for it for portability.
Nice seeing a vintage radio brought back to life and correctly repaired so it can be used on a regular basis for many year's, it probably hadn't been switched on in 40 years, back in those days people kept stuff even when it wasn't working,today we need to make room so dispose of old tech quickly. Not necessarily a bad thing, if it wasn't for modern equipment and cheap parts plus all the wizardry of RU-vid and hi tech digital cameras, things like this would not be being done or watched by people. 150,000 views or more, imagine telling people you are going to mend an old radio, you wouldn't have that many visit you and watch..
Another great video keep them coming they're very interesting I wish I can get you to work on some of my projects I watched you make a vacuum tube I never seen that before
Cool set. Setchell-Carlson also made a radio with the LV/portable radio tubes. In that case they made an intercom/radio and if it was off you could push the talk button (or listen one) and it would be almost "Instant-On" due to the direct-heater tubes. I had one years ago and it worked great!
Have ever done a tour of all your radios on you tube? I would like to see them. I once I new a guy who had an enormous collection of communications sets a whole large bedroom with racks and racks of stuff.
I asked this last video, I think 🤔... You know if Ron’s got boxes of knobs and drawers and capacitors like we saw and had to go to the attic to find the one knob he needed, that he has a collection of radios to die for!
@@budandbean1 yes love to see them maybe one day. The guy with the communication sets had the all wired and antenna connected it was amazing to go around and list to them , I don't know what his electric would be!
Wonderful restoration. If it wasn't done previously, probably should put around a 75 ohm dropping resistor in series with that silicon rectifier, B+ is probably a little high.
I'm an advocate of REFORMING GOOD power supply electrolytic capacitors. I first check ESR. If it's low like it would be, if good, I reform the capacitor with a Sprague Tel-Ohmike which has a current limiting resistor. Or I bring the radio up on a variac to prevent excess capacitor current and overheat the capacitor. In my experience aluminum canned 'lytics retain their moisture while paper wrapped 'lytics are always dried out and no good. I've had about 90% good results - saves unnecessary work and jammed in parts on miniaturized radios like this one. My biggest concern over grossly oversized input filters (220uF instead of 80uF) in a solid state rectified radio is the increased wear rate on the power switch - replacements are mostly unobtainable these days.
I found a product called Scratch Doctor that is for polishing scratches out of car paint but I have used it on plastic and have cleaned up chrome and the finish on one of my old radios. I wonder what it would do to Bakelite? Would probably do nice job.
I had a large green Zenith am ac-dc radio that used the same tubes It used a large battery and worked on ac as well. It developed silver mica disease and the 1R5 went bad. They wanted 30 dollars for that tube back in the mid 70s. I scrapped it for parts
Measuring the resistance of a capacitor, is that a good test? I have a capacitance meter that I've been blindly trusting for a while, if there are better ways it would be great to try out
