NORDMENDE Rigoletto 59 restoration & repair Part 1 

Hi Manuel. It’s coming along well. Having replaced most of the caps it’s sounding very good, even with the speaker out of the cabinet. I’m enjoying the new challenges. As you say, it’s all very logical, just sometimes a different way of doing things. Unfortunately I now have the cleaning to look forward to!

Cheers Dave. It's getting easier as I go on, in fact I'm getting to quite like it!

That's great to hear. Congratulations! Yes, these are beautiful radios and well worth the effort. Cheers

And i have the original schematic, in perfect condition, very helpful, for testing the voltages.i maybe opening the fm tuner for cleaning, it makes a scratching noise, when i tuning in the stations, it's not the tube,it's tested.

Thanks for the tip re the Zener diode. Good idea! I’ll check the voltages after changing the rectifier but a 12 volt zener would probably do the trick, I think. I’ve already bought a bridge rectifier which I think will fit. If not I’ll just fit 4 diodes as you suggested.

@@Donno308 Have fun and lots of success with your restauration. Hope you can fix the medium wave coil problem.

I’m finding it gets easier as I go along. I’ve certainly worked on worse radios for access. Identifying components is a bit of an issue - some I don’t recognise at all, but I can usually work out what they are from the schematic.

I’m slowly getting the hang of it. They certainly are different!

Thanks Jurriaan. I’ll look out for those wima caps. They are the shiny dark red ones? I didn’t know if they were good or not. I thought they were probably ceramic and probably ok.

@@Donno308 yes those red shiny candy-shaped ones they usually look good, but measure quite bad

Hi Roundy. I see you also follow Ojnoj. Great channel! I always enjoy his videos. I was going to change the selenium rectifier and I've heard all sorts of opinions both for and against. I'm going to power it up after the re-cap with the selenium in, but I'll most likely change it after that to be on the safe side. Cheers

@@Donno308 Yep, Ojnoj is a fellow Paddy! The thing about seleniums, is that when they expire, they STINK! If you are replacing it, don't forget a series resistor of an appropriate power rating to offset the higher voltage your shiny new silicon diode will provide to the electrolytics, and the HT line :)

@@Roundymooney Cheers Roundy. I've got a selection of 5 W resistors and I'm going to try to match the voltage I was getting with the selenium.

Ha ha! That’s my favourite!

Good to see these still in use!

@@Donno308 With me there was a lamp that still made light but no longer does its job and who knows, maybe it is something like that

@@Donno308 I hope yours works again too I know a bit about radios also with tubes I'm all about it when I was little and hung out at school but I learned it from myself I'm there now 40 years old and was always all gintreseert now there aren't many left who know those old things tog certainly not aar I'm sitting but I think it's great to have old digen I like that it's not junk it's very well designed

oo I see now I have a video how I made the same radio play silently with a solar panel and an inverter with battery of mopeds because my brother sleeps during the day because he does night work

@@Donno308 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ZLjTNMrk_no.htmlsi=fWoZQePz7CMZlce-

Hi John. When I first ran it up on the variac I didn't say what the final B+ voltage was but looking at the video, the meter seems to be showing about 260V so that would be about right. I'm sure I had the meter clipped to the wrong valve pin later in the video. After I changed the power supply caps the voltage came up higher, but that's in the next video. Cheers

Hi Brendan I did end up replacing the electrolytics. I don't like the idea of re-forming. Even if it works, you still have 60 year old capacitors which I wouldn't trust. I'm leaving the selenium rectifier in pending testing but I'll probably replace it anyway as I believe they're quite nasty if they do fail. Cheers

Hi Mike. Welcome to my little channel. The radio is progressing well and I’m just about to upload Part 2. It should be available in a few hours. These German radios are not so bad to work on. Cheers

Thanks Chris. Yes I am going to give the switches a good cleanout. I'm not sure at this point whether I should pull them apart (one at a time if possible) or whether I can spray enough contact cleaner into them from the outside and work the them on & off. I'll just have to see. Everything I've heard about these sets is very good so hopefully I can do it justice! I'm working on part 2 now. I usually post a new video every 2 weeks or so. Thanks for subscribing too! Cheers

Cheers Ross. It's coming along nicely and I'm editing Part 2 as I go (for a change). I try to post a video at least every two weeks, which is the best I can do as I have a full time job.

@@Donno308 You are doing very well with what you are putting out alongside a full time job. I struggle to find time for basic household tasks between my shifts.

Makes 2 of us.

@@Donno308 LOL

Yes I'm hoping the FM doesn't need anything. I can do the IF and AM bands ok.

A different market, I guess. This seems to be the Mercedes Benz of radios!

Thanks for the tip. I'll be giving the contacts a good clean anyway.

Hi. Sorry, I don't have a list of the capacitors I changed and I no longer have the capacitors I removed from this radio. It was some time ago. I would recommend changing all the paper capacitors and also the dark red "gum drop" capacitors (you can see one of these at center left off the screen at the 34 minute mark in the Part 1 video. I use "Amber" capacitors from a local supplier but Green caps are also good. Really, any type is fine so long as its voltage rating is the same or higher than the original capacitor. The "Amber" caps I use are rated at 600V so that covers just about everything. Good luck with your radio. I am happy top help if I can. Cheers

Nope. it wasn't that ... You'll have to watch to find out lol

@@Donno308 I did. It was the coil in the end.

Thanks Eduard. That’s very helpful. I’ve written the translation in pencil on the back (it will clean off later).

@@Donno308 If you can make a close up of the antena text in the next video I can translate it better,

@@maquetista16 I will, thanks! I have been using Google translate when I need to, It's not too bad but doesn't always get it right, particularly with technical terms.

@@Donno308 Technical languge translations are always dificult Don, you must be a native speaker for this, or at least worked in a job where you need both languages.

Har Har!

@@Donno308 It took a lot of "pluck" for me to write that! Ba-KaaaaaaK !😁

@@neilforbes416 did you hear about the computer that crossed the road it was programmed by a chicken lol

Thanks. I’m getting to like it more as I get to know it’s secrets.

Hopefully not too hard. Tracing the circuit through all the switches is the hardest part.

Mostly I do that but it depends on the radio. If I power it up on dim bulb and there’s no hum I might do some investigation first. But I always change the filter caps regardless.

If it hummed, it didn't know the words to the songs! LOL😁

I have been told that they have a high failure rate when they get old, and apparently when they fail it can be catastrophic. However there are differing opinions on this. Obviously it would be easier to leave it in place if it's safe to do so. I think I'll do some more research before making a decision.

@@Donno308 In my experience, the Black AEG Tower rectifiers are almost always good and Reform well when the radio runs a while. The flat aluminium ones by Siemens tend to fail or not Suppliers enough voltage for the radio

Hi. Yes, you're right. I must have made a mistake in the video saying it's a 1000 MFD. It is a 100 MFD. After reading this I rushed down to the shed to check I hadn't replaced it with a 1000 but all good, it's definitely a 100. Cheers

Thanks. I’ll try them.

Carls capacitors right in your backyard

I have a friend with a tube tester so he can check them for me but in my experience, tubes often last for many years. The main problems will be capacitors, bad connections, resistors out of spec etc. I think it will turn out well in the end though.

I tried to activate subtitles but it doesn’t work. I’m trying to fix it.

They come on by themselves a few hours after uploading to youube

They seem to be working now.

Hi Michael. Yes the old LSG11 will do at least the 10.7 Mhz IF frequency and probably more. For the FM RF alignment the instructions specified an FM modulated signal so it won't do that, however David Tipton said that he used an unmodulated signal. I could probably look at that with the oscilloscope and adjust it that way. One of these days I'll get myself a fancy FM modulated sweep generator ...

Thank you!

Thanks Neil. I did work out some of it using google translate but that isn't very good for technical stuff. Cheers

@@Donno308 There are German technical words that don't translate well in English. I spent some time in the late 1980s and early 1990s learning German for interest's sake.

@@top40researcher31 In German, you're being rude by using the *familiar* terms when you do not know me and have never met me in person. You should be using the polite formal terms, thus: "Ihre Kommentar ist so abstoßend".

@@neilforbes416 the comment has been removed.

@@neilforbes416 what happens if you translate German into English then English back into German

It certainly felt like that lol. Turning out ok though.