I worked for a small five shop business during the 60s and 70s. The boss was a kind man and looked after us all well. In my 70s now I can still remember many aspects of my working life at that time. Above all was the brands that we dealt with Pye, Phillips. Grundig. AEG. etc. I have decided lately that a hobby would be a good idea and restoring valve radios and so it is. Must say watching Davids work on these old sets has encouraged me to do the same. Now live on the east coast of UK. Thanks David for your inspiration and your introduction to Australian brands we don't see over here. Cheers. PS particularly STC.
Hi Robert. I hope you have success with your new hobby, I find it very rewarding and I have met many people in radio clubs and online in Facebook radio groups and through RU-vid. If you need advice on UK sets there are quite a few restorers on RU-vid. I am happy to recommend Phil from SteelCity321PB, he does mainly UK sets and is a very nice man as well: ru-vid.com/show-UCkKG9SNgu_T9e_gcEIyWwxg Good luck 👍😀
@Robert, *PYE* is a *British* brand, as is His Master's Voice and Decca. Here in Australia we only knew Decca as the record label that carried The Rolling Stones, but in Britain, Decca was a trademark carried on TVs, radios and phonographs, stereo or mono, as well as combinations of the three, TV/Radiograms!
Ambrose Fleming (inventor of the valve) advocated "learning by seeing". I am spending a good deal of this latest lockdown going through your videos again. I learn so much more from seeing and your explanations than from books. Thanks so much for these excellent videos and helping to keep things on track during this difficult season in the UK.
When this set was new and likely still on the display shelf at a radio/TV shop in England, It may have been tuned into BBC Radio 1 as the announcer was telling listeners of this new phenomenon called "Rock & Roll" and then playing *Thirteen Women* by Bill Haley & His Comets. In 1954 Rock Around The Clock was still relegated to the B-side of the 78rpm or 45rpm issue on the Brunswick label, issued by The Decca Record Co. In 1955 with the release of the Glen Ford film, *Blackboard Jungle,* Rock Around The Clock was promoted to the A-side of the disc. I have a British copy of the single on 45rpm from 1955 as it carries reference to the movie on the label.
Hi Dave when I saw that asbestos on the resistors with little whiskers sticking out, I was quite shocked, not meant as a pun..There could have been asbestos dust loose in the radio,.. gulp!. Good you wet it and disposed of it properly. A close friend of mine died of asbestos disease last year so I am a bit sensitive about it. Also it is often recommended on the UK vintage radio forum that the springs on the rimlock bases should be removed. The valves apparently don't fall out and can easily removed and inserted.
Hi Robert. I'm sorry you lost your friend last year. The asbestos was best removed, it posed little threat in normal use but better gone while I work on it. I remove the Rimlock springs from their slots and sit them up on the base until the service is complete nowadays, it is no problem if the spring it removed to the bin though. In the past I lost a number of valves to air with the spring in situ 🙄🙂
This radio has a many bands which makes it more complex but the circuit looks more complex as well. The AA5 is a very simple circuit to be as cheap to produce as possible.
Sometimes I would listen to Radio Hilversum on a Sunday Afternoon in the 60s, I did try Vatican and Voice of America but could not really come to terms with them, a bit of radio moscow for fun, then the odd chimes of prague presumably for the contact with spies in the UK, but mostly the radio was tuned to the light programme, or the home service. I was banned from listening to pirates as dad worked for the GPO.
Hi when you live in England or europe all these place names were avaiable, back in the 1970 when i was training I worked on loads of valve radios , live chassis you should have an earth free bench and an isolating tranformer nice videa remind me of my early work now its all smd
Hi, ajhnubia, that would be great to tune in stations by city names back then 🙂 That's a very good point too, my bench is not earthed and I use an isolation transformer 😇
Hi David, I have one of these sets thats had the power supply modified to have a power transformer and standard valve line up to replace the english valve series. Works quite well and despite being modified, I prefer not to have a "hot chassis". Great video series, well done.
Someone replied that some had transformers from new, I think in New Zealand models but can't quite remember now. Nothing like a hot chassis to keep you on your toes 😖
@@DavidTipton101 Perhaps thats the case with mine, it's been done professionally by the look of it. Good to have a standard series of valves in it, saves trying to source english replacements!
I believe if you tilt the valve slightly as you push it in, it should go in with less force. Similar method to take them out, lean it toward the gap in the metal surround and it will pop out. I did watch Jim Lindenas in Canada restoring the Canadian version. His has a wooden case but identical dial glass
Hi Wenlocktvdx... Yes, that's a good tip about the valves, thanks. I have seen it before but fear damaging the pin socket when tilting the valve but I think you are correct, I''ll do that next time. I watch Jim all the time, I seem to remember he did a video on a PYE radio, I'll have another look.
It has residence on our buffet unit John, I look at it every day during meals and it looks so fresh and clean, as you say the dial is colourful and the PYE badge gleams 😃
When I was a kid, we were rather poor due to a judgement against my father stemming from grandfather's old government seed loans, dad was the executor and was stuck with the judgement, thus 1/3 of every thing we sold off the farm went to the fed. So it was, that we never had the funds to hire anyone to fix anything. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention, and dad was very wise when it came to such things. His old saying, when it came to thing such as this on-of switch - if you can't rivet it, screw it! Works for me!
Your videos are amazing, I don't no of anyone who restores radio as well as you do,two things I haven't seen you do is use Deoxit 5 or Deoxit 100 for things like volume knobs etc.or oil on tuning capacitors bearings .do you use something different?.I have seen you restore radios other techs would have given up on .I love learning from you.I even bought a digitech analog meter you use for alignments .It took a long time to get it from from Australia. I am also restoring 3 different type tube heathkit analog meters.thankyou for your videos .
Hi Ron, thank you. I use DeoxIT D5 on valve socket, switches etc, I want to get some F5 for volume control carbon strips. I can't get D100. The deoxIT F5 is $56 a can and a two hour round trip. I use grease in tuning capacitor ball bearings and oil on the end bearing. Heathkit made a lot of stuff. Thanks Ron 👍🙂
Hello Dave, can I can give you one tip? When you take the camera in your hand to show us details of a radio the picture gets blurry. This is probably caused by the fact you hold the camera too close to the subject and the lens can't focus on such a short distance. Please keep the camera further away and give it time to focus, which normally takes a second or so. The quality of the picture will be so much better. Thank you.
Hi de Mus. Thanks for the tip. I don't use hand held cameras, the shaking is from the camera mount. I have fixed it so it is solid. I also use manual focus except for in my workshop. Sometimes I don't get the focus right and it's annoying but I try my best and try to improve as I go. I need a camera person 😀
@@DavidTipton101 I know you use camera's on tripods, but it seemed to me that you picked up one of them to show more details which unfortunately turned out blurry. Please don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing, I love your videos and just try to give some input on them.
@@demus8757 I just realised you are looking at a video I did some years ago, sorry, yes I may have attempted hand held back in the day, I avoid it at all costs for the reasons you said.
Interesting comment about how you're supposed to tune into stations with the names on the dial, in England, we knew our local station by wavelength, so for example 330 metres which today would be 909khz, so we tuned just past the 300m mark on the dial to get the station, there was a lot more effort required back then to tune a radio in, I find the Australian dials without numbers on, just the stations on quite unique.
It was very handy having the stations on the dial but frequencies got changed and shuffled and a lot of stations are not where they used to be so don't line up anymore, oh well 😄
Yes those Pye radios were really not meant to last more than 10 years so this one surviving this long is good. Good job fixing that switch too bad about the valves breaking. Then you have all of those coils for all of the bands to worry about. I have a 1940 G.E. Radio where the band switch was literally in pieces talk about a nightmare to trace out. Hope you do better with this radio.
This radio takes pride of place on our buffet next to the dining table. It looks as good as the day it was made and the contrast between the cream and brown is eye catching. I don't envy you with the band switch, I have been lucky so far and hope to stay that way 👍😀
That's defo one of the weirdest switches! I can't see why it would work in the first place. To be noted. I've got two of these, so greatly appreciate this series of episodes. Strangely enough, the two radios I've got are not the same. I got the second one because I wanted to have a spare just in case the original developed a fault and also, in the vain hope I'll one day be keen enough to wire them up as a stereo system. Well, to my surprise, when the second radio arrived it was completely different! First of all, the tuning scales were totally different - bands, stations and all - and secondly and, rather more importantly, the original radio was battery only which had at some point been converted to mains. It's interesting to see from the back shot in your video that this radio is both battery and mains. It's also to be noted that it's a hot chassis - something I did not notice when I received mine, wishfully thinking it wouldn't be even though there was no transformer in sight. I'll definitely check both radios when I have the chance. I suspect, whoever did the modification to the original radio might have taken out the hot chassis mains psu - or perhaps there was no psu there at all, in the first place, which would be interesting. I'm not gonna mess with the asbestos but it's great you pointed out what it is as I would have no clue otherwise. One thing I know is that the knobs are probably on the brittle side. On the original radio two of them are broken (the shaft inserts) and my dad did a quick fix using at some point using gypsum. It works! I also still have the original rubber jacket wire antenna although a good portion of it is caked. It probably did not come with the radio although I wouldn't know.
Hi Stelios, I trust you are well. My radio is a UK model and is a hot chassis set. The big transformer is the output transformer for the speaker, there isn't a mains transformer. The switch turned out OK and is still working thank goodness. The case and knobs on mine are in great shape so I was lucky there. It's a very good radio with a nice sound. I can imagine you getting two radios with two different innards, these radios were probably made for in in different countries, there may have been an australian version but I don't know that for sure. All the best with your two radios 👍🙂
@@DavidTipton101 Hi David. Thanks for the reply. I hope you too are doing well. Both radios are in my parental home so it'll be a while until I check them. My grandma used to refer to the sound of the Pye as "metalic" - which supposedly was advertised as a good thing at the time. There's an interesting story attached to the original radio: supposedly my grandpa went off to close a land deal but upon return home he told my grandma the deal was off as the purchase offer was not good. So instead, he bought a radio! My grandma was totally astonished. Different times these were. As you can imagine I never quite warmed up to the sound of this radio although I do not know whether this was because of its sound alone, it's 50's looks or the story behind it - or the fact there was not much for a kid to listen to on it! Nevertheless, I have to say the build inside is quality. Both radios work perfectly (last I checked) and, apart from the mains conversion, nothing's ever been done to them. I took the chassis out about a decade (or two) ago to clean up the layer of dust and the paint underneath gleamed like new without any hint of rust. My grandma was watching the operation in complete horror! Anyway, I hope this story has amused you.
PS: The only problem I've got with the radios is an aesthetic one: it appears the second radio was in a smoker's house possibly the result of which has been a slightly darker tone of the cream painted fascia. As the two radios are sat side-by-side, it shows. I have tried to wipe the fascia with lukewarm water to which I had added some alcohol. That removed a lot of the dirt but reaching in between the grille's slats was impossible and risky. I haven't attempted to dismantle the radio and give the case a bath. I reckon this would be a fruitless effort and in the process I'd run the risk of damaging something. Plus I'm not sure the paint would withstand this treatment. If you know of any successful method for removing age old cigarette smoke that appears embedded in the paint without damaging it, I'd be all ears.
Alcohol seems to be the best way to remove tar but as you say the grill is painted so it requires some care. I managed to clean mine for painting using a toothbrush in the hard to get places but the radio was out of the case.
That is an interesting story Stelios, imagine buying a radio in lieu of a block of land! I wonder why it sounded off, the plastic case maybe, mine sounds ok, not as good as a wooden case though 🤔
The UL41 is an audio output pentode from 1953. 🤔The U series were designed to operate with a heater chain across the mains in the days when AC mains had not reached all parts of the country. These universal sets contained no mains transformers and the valves were designed for low anode voltage and higher anode current to provide adequate output. 😗The UL41 could produce 4.2 Watts at 10% distortion. Circa 1947> NEWBIES~ If one valve failed then the set stopped working, whereas later sets had separate heater in 'parallel' not 'series'.😗 These sets could also work on DC as well as AC which a lot of later sets could NOT unless modified. 😗NOTE the rust on the chassis. Many earlier radio sets especially made in the UK! often rusted quite badly. The metals re chassis and fixings et used, were seriously prone to rust and corrosion. 👀 Mass produced made for profit at the long term expense of the consumer was the order of the day, the dropper resistors vs the cost of a transformer? Peanuts! SO we have to remember if they were prepared to cut back on safety in particular, you would not be wrong in how they also picked low quality cheap as ... components such as resistors, capacitors et et
Great choice of bands on this old set. Nice to see it back up and running again. Not a fan of hot chassis stuff mind. Been bit by a couple of old valve TV’s in the past!
Wow, 217 degrees Celsius on that mains dropping resistor (at 18:40 in the video)! I am surprised the plastic case doesn't melt or char through above these two resistors. With all that heat in the case when running at a mains voltage of 240 volts, there must be plenty of temperature rise.
It makes a great room heater as well as a radio Bill. The heat generally does take its toll on the case and the cardboard back panel although this one wasn't too bad. I'm not sure why the Poms stuck with the design with such a high voltage unless they still needed DC sets, transformers couldn't be that expensive 🤔
@@DavidTipton101 Interesting. I never thought of the DC power source aspect, although probably very rare, maybe tied to an obscure residential power standard used in that day. Agreed, with the money spent on those substantial power resistors, I wouldn't think a power transformer would cost that much more. One drawback with the series dropping resistor however; the aluminum electrolytics will dry out faster.
@42:33 with this type of valve the later versions had no metal support to protect the glass from spring pressure when seated in the set. I have found many of these to have failed due to the glass cracking. I suggest you remove the metal circlip from the base. The valve will sit there just as well without it and will not fail from mechanical stress.
@@DavidTipton101 I think at the end when you showed us the dud I think I could see where the circlip had sheared the glass pip off. Whoever thought that (updated)design of valve was a good idea needs talking to.
If you are ever in the USA I have some old radios to sell...Philco Hippo...working...some that work but have the static from the old paper capacitors. I don't have the knowledge to repair them as you do.
Hi Frank, I don't have plans to travel to the US at the moment, thanks though. I like the look of the Hippo, I think that's an All American 5 of which I don't have any 🤔🙂
@@DavidTipton101 Yes...I collected a few years and most of my radios work but some have the static needing cap replacement. Something I noticed you are astute at. That is the only reason I brought it up. The hippo works and picks up stations no problem and I have an old 1946 Crosley overseas radio you might like. It's heavy...maybe 30 lbs.
ive got the same watt meter and its display stopped working to, whats the thing you have on your newer videos? i ve seen the transformerless valve stuff before, is it just same voltages , is it 200v dc? and ith tansformer its 200 0 200 coming out of the secondary ?
My meter still worked but it doesn't like starting at a low voltage like I was doing, The meter I use now is better and available on eBay. This radio uses 240 Volts AC, it drops the voltage to 110 VAC using a big resistor. The AC is rectified to DC or you can use DC directly from the mains from the days when DC was available to some homes. The 110 is used to run the radio and the rest is run through the valve heaters which are rated to use close to 110 volts.
Hi James, if I remember it was the across the line capacitor I changed. The death capacitor goes from active to chassis and requires a Y capacitor. I like to leave the caps in place if I can because I have had radios that picked up mains hum but certainly not mandatory 👍🙂
Hi there how would you know how to plug in a radio without a polarized plug if I have some old radios and how did people plug it in years ago. Thanks my friend
Hi Emilio, In a transformerless radio one of the mains wires usually goes to the chassis or to a floating B-, the other wire goes to the heater string and the rectifier to become B+. This wire should be wired to the active side of the mains supply. In the old days with a non polarised plug, the user was told to reverse the mains plug to get best performance.
Hi 100uno100. I Google the make and model number and sometimes add "circuit" or "schematic" on the end. Radio Museum usually comes up but you may get other sites with better circuit diagrams and additional information. You may even find videos or blogs with info on your radio 🙂
@@DavidTipton101 I have repaired and rebuilt an Oceanic Caravelle without any schematics or anything (there is no information from that radio). This was my problem, but it is already working and I have to adjust it perfectly and change the speaker.
@@100uno100 If I can't find the exact model radio I use Radio Museum search function to find radio models in the same era, yours is 1956 so I search between 1952 and 1960 for Oceanic radios and check the semantics for one that is similar to the one I need. Manufacturers tend to stick to the one design and the methods of aligning will also be similar. The radio may also have been sold under different brands. Good luck 👍😀
David Tipton the US FCC used to be made up of technical radio personnel. Today the FCC is mostly lawyers. When I worked for RCA I held the corporate position of Frequency Spectrum Management. The offices I worked in were in NYC at NBC Broadcasting , RC Princeton , the research lab and in Washington, DC the lobbyist office. We were liaison for RCA to the government. My job was temporary licensing application for experimental purposes. It was an interesting job, like being the ambassador of radio. GE merged upon RCA and our office was considered redundant, we were terminated. I did manage find a position within GE in the instrument lab calibrating and repairing test equipment. I was glad to be back on the bench surrounded by electronics once again. Four the next five years I was an RCA / GE employee.
