Just watched Shango's video on the same radio. So cool how both of you found one of those at the same time. Neat little radio's. You and Shango make the best repair videos. Thanks for sharing. Take care. :-)
Really like this radio 📻. Looks like a story in a nutshell. Can be set on the shelf up to look like a book, and would be worth a laugh if somebody tries to pick it up to read it, to find out it’s a radio. 1956, when Crosley was a great brand, built right here in America, by American worker s. Quality went behind that nice, gold colored speaker grille. No Chinese ejaculatory fluid, as you often mention in 2010 Crosley’s, to present. Came one year before ‘57 Chevy trucks. When cars and radios ruled the world 🌎 over.. You’re one of the best radio restoration people, alongside Shango066 and David Tipton. Sad 😞 thing is, world’s full of crappy Chinese radios today. They will be in the dump before 5 years. Keep these great 👍 videos coming.
Those Nashville caps are American made, and they were always crap, I had transistor radios with those back in the late 80s, early 90s, and they had already failed. The only ones equally as bad are those coloured plastic cased Japanese caps from the 60s, those are always bad.
Hi, I think you and Shango and a few others are doing a great job, lovely interesting stuff. Learning electronics and all the stuff you guys do is wonderful. I have been an engineer for about 50 years now both in mechanical and electronic. I am still doing electrical design for a living. Not quite electronics and I do radio repair as a hobby. Wonderful advice and knowledge. Shango is one of the few people a find is my type of humour. Shame some of these sellers don't respect this old stuff. Cheap does not mean valueless. It is never going to be made to this standard again. I have thought of trying to manufacture some simple things to this standard, I don't suppose it would ever be viable. Trying to get youngsters interested is nearly hopeless but I do try. I could build a radio before I left school. I did radio and TV repair at college while at school. Now kids could not hook up a battery, switch and bulb from a diagram. Let alone do any calculating. I did eventually do an electronics degree in Oxford but I am not Mr. Genius I worked very hard and made it. doing a part time job as well. I was the first in my family to ever get a degree. I had to sell my little repair business to help finance that. Great job, and if anybody criticizes they should go pound sand. It takes years and years to have your skill and knowledge. Wonderful and I am a real fan. Thankyou to Shango for mentioning your channel.
I’m so glad to see this. Yep, it’s an oddball radio. Besides the novelty, portable tube/transistor radios existed briefly in the era of Elvis Presley, Fats Domino and Bill Haley. Very cool.
I had one of those Magnavox radios back in the day. I'd say it was a bit of a collectible as well as it was a quality AM transistor radio from that era.
Maybe you can send the tuning dial and speaker grill to Shango. Shango's tuning dial had some free play in it, yours looked better. Then he can replace the speaker grill. Since Shango put in updated batteries, maybe he can sell it on RU-vid for $500 and you two can split the winnings!
One of my great aunts had a hearing aid with tubes like that. It was a Zenith in a little brass case, with an earphone that was hooked up like the ones on pocket radios.
Back when I was a kid I had a couple of old hearing aids that used those tubes. Had one of these radios later on. Can't remember where I got it from now but I wondered what went through the minds at Crosley deciding to make something like this when Regency and their competitors had already done all-transistor sets that used cheaper batteries and weren't already obsolete. In philosophy this followed the same approach the makers of auto radios of that time were using - tube front end and transistor output to drive the speaker.
The hybrid car radios use space charge tubes, which eliminated the need for a high voltage power supply, but space charge tubes don't have enough gain to be used as a power amplifier for audio, so hence the power transistor. Current draw, and power consumption, the only advantage of transistors at the time, wasn't really an issue in a car. Transistors were also a new, and somewhat expensive technology at the time, a transistor radio cost at least twice what an equivalent tube set would have cost in the 1950s. I'm kind of curious as to why they limited the B+ to 45 volts as 67-1/2 was an off the shelf battery for a portable back then, I guess to conserve space in what is basically a novelty radio?
@@olegkostoglotov8800 Yep. I just didn't go into the details that far. This development also threw a wrench into other tube radio designs. RCA came up with a new output tube in 1955 that was expressly designed for car radios, unlike earlier tubes that came from home designs. They expected it to take over the auto market - the 12AB5. Very few radios were ever made with it and the sole use I can recall of it now was the classic Wollensak T-1500/T-1515(-4) tape recorders of the second half of 1956 to 1964. They did briefly make a model that could run on 12 volts but this tube made no real impact on that design.
Hello rtvpn, Nice little radio. Don at Restore old Radios on RU-vid, has put modern caps in the old capacitor to maintain the original look like you intend to if needed. I always learn something from you and your videos, a happy long time loyal sub. All the best, C.
I have a couple of those Crosleys I picked up years back. One is just like yours but the other has this odd pressure switch below the screw in on the grille. I guess the intention was that when you open the cover of the book the radio would turn on. I think the problem with that was the spring was too strong so if you just closed it the spring would push the cover open and would turn itself on and you would have dead batteries. I assume that was an earlier version and they did away with that design due to that reason.
You can restuff a Bumble Bee cap, with an axial lead cap, by drilling out it's insides from one end, cutting one open probably won't be possible without destroying the plastic shell, unless you mean cutting the end off to remove the capacitor inside with a drill bit like Dennis Carter has. Hopefully this won't be necessary as the plate voltages found in this set are not going to exceed 45 volts whereas most of those Bumble Bee caps were rated at 400 volts or higher, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't go leaky on their own.
Yah Those Tube Type Portables Drew Alot Of Power & That TV Repair Guy Was Right By The Time You Got That Tube Portable Radio Repaired You Could Buy One Of Those 9 Volt Transister Radios. That's Why They Came Out With Them Cause They Wh'er Cheaper To Operate Then Those Old Portable Tube Type Radios.
I just watched Shango 066 Do a similar radio, must be twin projects day ,He made his own Battery packs for the radio, you can do the same thing to use it. First i ever seen a Radio like These.
In this day and age, would it not be easier to simply whack in a modern 18650 or 21700 lithium-ion battery or three alkaline D cells for the low-voltage rail and five 9V cells wired in series for the high-voltage rail?
Interesting, and interesting history history. I have what appears to be a late ‘70’s pocket radio.( bottom of the barrel quality), an AM/FM AFCO “15”. ( “9 transistors/ 6 Diodes). All that and it’s a poor performer.[ but does work]. 📻🙂
Nice radios. I never cared about FM. I love listening to AM up to this day. I'm just curious. Have you ever thought about totally changing out the tubes of an old radio and put transistors in there place to add more years to a radio. I would love to see such a video of you ever do. Thank you for sharing.
It's very rarely that I have to replace a tube, or that replacing one repairs a radio, more often then not it's failed paper capacitors, electrolytic capacitors, and drifted resistors that are the problem. Transistors haven't really proven themselves to be any more reliable in retrospect, whilst tubes slowly wear out with use, transistors, and other semiconductors, seem to fail because of age regardless of how much use they see. Some were just plain awful for failing, like the black domed top transistors from the late 1960s and early 70s. Substituting transistors for tubes in a radio is a fool's errand, the idea was kicked around in the 1970s, and 80s, in some circles. But the reality is that most restored tube equipment is used so little compared to it's heyday that the tubes never really gets a chance to fail, and there are many more new old stock, and good used tubes available then there are radios or TVs to use them. Even the power consumption angle isn't as much of an issue thanks to battery technology.
@@olegkostoglotov8800 true...very rarely the problem is tubes with me....and paper caps cause problems but the hard failures are usually something else..... Transistors also get noisy and intermittent like the 70's germaniums...also when one fails often takes down several components, sometimes frying and entire board. tubes are easier to swap and equipment is far easier to service
@@olegkostoglotov8800 Thank you. That does makes sense in what you're saying. I know tubes can take on heavier loads than transistors when things go wrong.
Too bad you can't buy the original "A" and "B" batteries that these radios operate on anymore. I'm curious as to when those model batteries were actually discontinued.
OK radiotvphononut/shango066, Someone is playing with my/our heads. Did the planets align just right that both of you were working on the same circuit at the same time? SURE! Deny it… Thanks shango066/radiotvphononut for the videos. Carl/other’s
"Automatic Radio" - I had a cassette player from the late 1960s made by Automatic Radio. But can't find much about that company today. Was it based in Massachusetts? I sometimes miss that old player and wish I had fixed it rather than throw it away. .. A long time ago...
Not if ebay searches are evidence, at least 10 in the past year. I don't think that these sets were used for very many hours, in part because of being battery only, basically a novelty radio.
Bumble bombs , almost everyone I have run into , a split down the side,or worst .I cant believe people pay good money for vintage bundle bee caps.Best if luck with it.
All of those molded paper caps were doomed to fail, Sangamo "Little Chiefs", "Bumblebees", and Sprague "black beauties", though some of the latter were paper-mylar. They liked using Bumble Bombs as power line caps, I had one fizzle and split apart in an RCA portable I was testing.
A word about old American miniature electrolytics: Nearly every one I have encountered is seriously bad and many do fail as shorted. They can fool an ESR tester too. Leakage off the scale is common.
legit question, do you record the audio by transmitting on an AM CB, receiving on another AM CB then syncing it to the video? this channel has a *very*destinctive tone.
nope if it is not a crosley I would want the crosley at any price . shove the magnavox and any other I would pay the price of three transistors brand new and your price to repair it
I guess as transistors were new technology and expensive; that is the reason for using tubes or was it bc they didn't have transistors to to other functions. Crosley is now a name used for cheap phonograph. Junk. Only BLACK.bumblee lives matter, lol.
