I’ve done numerous German sets like this one, and it really sounds like an alignment issue. You could do a simple alignment by feeding a 10.7MHz unmodulated carrier via a couple of turns of wire over the ecc85, and max the voltage level across the detector cap. Just tweak the cores prior to the last one (the extra sensitive bugger) for max negative voltage across the cap. I then just tweak the final one to null out the detector by ear for least distortion. If you find that this improves the sound then you can do the full alignment process as described in the service manual, which, I agree with you, can be a pain. Good luck. I really enjoy your work. PS: they actually suggest that you do an alignment after every change of the ecc85 because it does throw out the alignment by simply putting in a new tube, so the front end is really sensitive to everything you change there.
Blibby blur blur, blibby blur blur - laughed till I couldent catch my breath. Gasp! Awsome vid, thanks for sharing. Still believe Shango066 for President, vote here.
At this point I ask myself why I restore tube radios. 99% of "music" they receieve is trash anyways. Thats like being resurrected from the dead to become a Kardashian
I feel you. Consider adding Bluetooth to the input. That lets you stream your favorite content from your device in beautiful vacuum tube sound. www.amazon.com/Sure-Electronics-Bluetooth-Receiver-Wireless/dp/B00KMTOK0A/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1545089946&sr=8-2&keywords=sure+electronics+bluetooth
Major takeaway from this video: today's radio sucks. My hat off to you though for working on what looks like a nightmare to repair. Learned a lot from this video.
Time for the release of the 2018 shango066 rap video, "Shux my Nordmende needs bucks, gonna holla so it gets a dolla.". BTW my 1990 Dodge van's service manual says to coat the engine computers plug and socket with lithium grease .Looking forward to part III...
Shango you could do an alignment with a 6LB sledgehammer, this radio will then allow you to listen to people on the astra satellites, beaming down mind numbing spirit crushing gameshows whilst theyre stuffing junkfood in their mouths. Choose your future, choose Life.
Sounds like the discriminator needs a slight touch up' Like you mention if you go tweaking those cores, something may break loose. Maybe you can check for zero volts at the balance point, it may be dead on. I always remember your alignment video of a cheap transistor radio and how much the distortion was minimized when done. Keep at it, Dan, you can do it!
With the crap that passes for music the past few years, I'm not sure I want to repair radios. It's all "vizza voom giga boom drank smoke" no matter what genre.
It is for the better, in my opinion, that "I drink 'till I'm drunk. I smoke 'till I'm high...You know I'm super-fly," is not on AM. Bleh bleh bleh bleh bleh bleh bleh.
The stereo effect is also enhanced a lot when the external speakers are plugged in. Grundig sets had similar layouts with bass speakers in the front next to each other, and tweeters at the sides of the cabinet + external mid range speakers, values were often 5 Ohms.
Loewe-Opta made one model of table radio, the Hellas 2841W, which had two front-firing woofers, two side mounted midrange speakers and a horn tweeter which radiated out both sides of the cabinet. It also had separate amplification for the woofers.
30:56 A Hungarian Tungsram tube from about 1970-1985 installed in a 1963 vintage German set in the US in 2018... Nice :) . Have you bought that tube directly from Hungary, or from a third country? Good to know that good ol' Hungarian tech spreading across the world thanks to ebay :) . Greetings from Hungary, and have a happy Holiday! P.S. In Hungarian AM-FM radios, the IF tubes were usually ECH81 and EBF89, the only example I found in a hurry is the Orion AR604, which has EF89 in the IF.
Props for the input from Hungary. Never had the chance to visit, but have known quite a few people from there and seen many photos. Beautiful country with a rich history. Good, solid, friendly, no-nonsense people. While growing up the neighbor taught my mother how to make Paprikas and kifli, to name just 2 things. God bless her for that. Yummmm. :) I would love to visit some day. Happy Holiday from Ohio, US.
I'll try that again. The tuner socket looks suss and the other socket with all that white crap in it, needs to be cleaned or replaced. My mum has an old Kriesler radio gram (we live in Victoria Australia) AM only but with a decent antenna connected there was always a slight gap even on the strongest stations. It is a stereo 3 way unit with electrostatic tweeters and sounded great in its hey day. I never pegged the tuner seeing eye valve no matter what station you tuned in. It measured the strength and the closest I got was about 1 cm on the strongest channel. I wouldn't worry about that. Worry about the distortion and forget the seeing eye valve. Cheers from down under. Andrew.
I have to buy one of these older radios, but with a better FM stage....the Zenith with the pre-War & post-War FM bands just looks cool to me...I saw one console with a wire recorder from 1947 on RU-vid, I'd want that just for the novelty, maybe get some of those wire spools, play around with it.
At 30:46 For a while, to listen to Shortwave was all we could do We were young and Shango knew, and our eyes were alive Deep inside we knew our Shortwave was true For a while we paid no mind to the past We knew the Shortwave would last Every night somethin' right Would invite us to begin the dance Somethin' happened along the way What used to be happy was sad Somethin' happened along the way And yesterday was all we had Oh, after the Shortwave has gone How could you lead me one And not let me stay around? Oh, after the Shortwave has gone What used to be right is wrong Can Shortwave that's lost be found? For a while to listen to Shortwave whit each other With all we would ever need Shortwave was strong for so long Never knew that what was wrong Shango was right We tried to find what we had Til sadness was Shango shared We were scared this affair Would lead our Shortwave into Somethin' happened along the way Yesterday was all we had Somethin' happened along the way What used to be happy is sad Somethin' happened along the way What used to be was all we had Oh, after the Shortwave has gone How could you lead me on And not let me stay around? Oh, oh, after the Shortwave has gone What used to be right is wrong Can Shortwave that's lost be found? Oh, oh, after the Shortwave has gone What used to be right is wrong Can Shortwave that's lost be found Oh, oh, after the Shortwave has gone
from somebody who is very passionate with electronic field and how it works and how to repair I can really appreciate the detail that you put into your videos although I would like to see more repairs in details on other certain amateur radio equipment vintage and rare situations however I do use your videos as in Elmer for certain Electronics thank you for your videos
Hahahah ! love your phone chat with the library lady survey. and then the blahblahblehblehbleblebleehbleh ! lol. mumble. Tube sound is so nice and warm.
I am genuinely intrigued by this set. These consoles are rather hard to find I’ve realized. I was offered a really large telefunken once but that offer never came to surface. Thanks for these great videos!!
My Scott 320 tuner had very similar symptoms. It didn't have as weak sensitivity, but the audio was distorted like that. I found an old Scott tuner document that gave the basics on how to align it. Using that, going off the eye tube, and by ear, I was able to get the Scott pretty much dead on. What appeared to really clean up the distortion was what I believe to be the discriminator slug. I found when I was tuned to the strongest station, I was able to tweak it until I found the sweat spot and the audio was perfect. What I found interesting is with the discriminator dead centered on the scope, it appeared to be off when listening to it on a very strong station.
I recently had a problem on a similar vintage Philips radio with the same tube lineup minus the separate output tubes. It picked out all the stations, but the volume was very low and the eye tube didn't move at all. Both on FM and AM. I found a problem by measuring the voltages on the IF tubes, g2 voltage on the one of the IF tube (EF85/6BY7) was only 2V. Caused by a shorted bypass polyester capacitor to ground. Replaced it, and now it picks up stations even without any antenna. Also the first time I saw that type of capacitor to short.
You’d like to think the alignment won’t be off, and from what I hear about these German radios, it usually isn’t. But... The same person who packed the tube sockets with lithium grease, may have also started tweaking on the adjustment slugs, with no more equipment than the screwdriver with the broken tip in their hand.
I've seen those tubular ceramic capacitors in old Japanese dollar store radios. I didn't even touch them in the one I have; actually I only replaced one capacitor in the whole thing and that was a tiny paper capacitor across the second IF coil which I replaced with a poly one.
9:50 First time in 40 years the FM works and what comes out? "Wake Up In The Sky" by Gucci Mane (You can't tell me I ain't fly (you can't tell me I ain't fly) I know I'm super fly (I know), I know I'm super fly (I know) The ladies love the luxury (yeah), ) lol 20:40 There is that song again, that must pretty popular in LA
1995VoyagerES Local electronics stores don't exist in the vast majority of the US any more either. I'm thinking the only thing that keeps that alive in the LA area is the combined presence of TV studios and Hollywood. Lots of old electronics in those places. Here in the Seattle area, I was at Fry's and saw a station engineer for a local FM radio station buying capacitor assortments. I asked why, and he said to keep old gear going.
Shango do these old radios have something like, a "squelch" circuit ? I was wondering why there was no static between stations, and then you mentioned it ! I'm thinking back to the days we all had CB radios in our trucks..lol. They were fun ! Like having a cell phone party line.lol
This is probably a stretch but. have you tested the EM84 to make sure the eye actually closes? I came across a replacement one a few years back where the eye didn't close all the way at the proper voltage
That capacitor that you checked in the F.M. Demodulator and called a Stabiliser is actually the A.M. Limiting Capacitor isn't it?Also when I've heard him over here on the radio in Britain Alex Jones has always been interesting listening.Such as questioning the merits of what is being put in our drinking water for example.
Shango, I am no expert I have a feeling that the problem is in the tuner maybe you should try impedance matching the antenna, try a bunny ear w/gain boost or something, what about that cap you changed in the tuner, could a 150-500pf trimmer be substituted? What do you think cause the failure in that cap? Maybe there are more bad ones in there. I hope you don't think I am trying to confuse you, but I am getting frustrated too, I can just imagine what you're feeling.
All you need is a big screen room with sealed doors etc with your test equipment and you inside, no external interference. I don't know how many $$$; I have worked in one years ago)
To get rid of the distortion I'd do a full alignment, also I had to slightly detune the FM IF for a wider passband to get rid of the distortion on strong stations. If you have a sweep oscillator it's best done visually to get a flat passband. (or as you said, stagger tuned)
even Snoop mocked these lil pump mumble rappers like Shango did when shango was going on about 90s rappers still speaking english when Snoop came on the radio
If the limiter stages in the IF are not going into saturation and letting amplitude variations through to the detector, the ratio detector can interpret that as distortion. It is also possible that the IF alignment is off. The only real way to sort it out is with a signal generator and a distortion analyzer. All my knowledge of this stuff related to solid state equipment, but the same principles apply. I'm sure someone with more knowledge of vintage tube IF's will chime in and hopefully enlighten us all. I do agree though, it seems like a lack of gain issue to me as well.
i am at 15 mins through the video and i notice slight background static/distortion on FM and it seems to go away on very very strong stations..i had that same problem and it was the fm frontend tube...those types of radios play a perfect sound especially on FM even on "weakish" stations ..maybe it can be the capacitor or it's lead dress or the fact that it is running with the FM shield removed. i have tons of those tubes...i could donate one happily if the shipping would compensate but i bet its expensive as hell
20:45 i just shazamed that song it wake up in the sky by Gucci mane Bruno Mars and kodak black and im pretty sure google can content match a pretty shitty sounding audio but Shazam is owned by apple
I've used lithium grease as heat-sink compound but sealed up and not in electronics and not at those temperatures!!! When you build an air conditioner out of a de-humidifier and have to water cool the compressor...
Maybe my mind was scrambled by the high quality music received but I only recall seeing one output transformer, near the EL84s where is the other one? It might have been shown when I made a cuppa T? PS. Now every record is made with zero dynamic range and 110% modulation, that's probably how the music SHOULD sound. Cynical?? what me??
At the time this radio hit the market Germany only used frequencies up to 100 MHz for FM. Since this radio goes up to 108 MHz I think that they also took care of the de-emphasis.
@@DasMrOSi I have a zero to one watt FM transmitter that I can, with the push of a button, change the pre-emphasis I think from 50 to 75µs. When I change the pre-emphasis on the transmitter, I cannot hear the difference? Maybe its because it is an inexpensive boombox? Another thing that seems to have gone away is the Stereo signal pilot light? Maybe not too soon to disappear, will be analog signal on the FM band? A lot of foreign countries have already pulled the plug. I say "Not too soon" because of the heavy use of FM in vehicles in this country. (USA that is:)
@@Captionmarvelous The change in deemphasis should result in a bit more or less treble, most noticable in "s" sounds. Germany is also slowly working on pulling the plug on analog FM. We now got a service that's called "DAB+", it's digital an powered by the AACv2 Codec. One transponder could create a stream with up to 224kbps. The problem is: To save costs they cramp as many radio stations into that steam as possible, resulting in music station having to work with 48 kbps. The reception is awesome, but I can't listen to it for more than 10 minutes. Dynamic is lost, stereo separation suffers, and artifacts all over the place.
at 16:25, why have a resistor or capacitor with a coil wrapped around it? I have seen this before in other valve radios, but never found out the reason for it. Thank you for any replies... Ian.
I don't know much about FM, but it sounds like there's some overloading going on. In an AM radio, if AVC/AGC isn't working right it will blast the detector---that's something that could be checked easily enough with voltage measurements
Is there more to my thought of that Tube in back being 'loose' - it's too loose? - it's mentioned and does send 'static' [?] each time touched. =\ Dowse with Jive - *Super Fly~zzd.* No one only thinks needles hide in hay stacks, do they? ssh - i'm still Learning To Think! * Cheers!
I think it is common for those German radios to not have a very hot FM. My parents had several and none of them were really hot. The AM and SW was always great.
Yes shango, I sure do miss white man music. I really need some Pat Boone and the Lennon Sisters right about now. They are like a breath of fresh air standing over the broken sewer of 'so called' modern music...may God have mercy on our sinful ass souls!
Haven't seen the next episode yet, as a complete novice and have never worked on anything with tubes , it sounds like something is being over driven, just my uneducated guess on the FM in future episodes.
