It is very encouraging on the first power up, that you hear some station on any band. You do very good work, nice and methodical, well thought out, and careful too. I wish that you could of been the first one to have repaired it, but that is getting to be a fairly rare event. I'm sure the owner is going to be delighted. Repairing it the way you have has put real value back into the radio. Looking forward to seeing a video of it all put together. Great job.
Thanks! I think this radio will have a nice sound to it. The reception might be a bit on the weak side due to the aftermarket coil, but at least it will function now. I'm still trying to figure out the best approach for replacing the neutralizing condenser C23. I have a 1PF Mica capacitor that might do the trick. Once I have the speaker repaired, I'll start on the alignment.
Maxxarcade If that 1 pF does not work, you can always try making the gimmick varying the amount of turns in till you get the proper performance. Or you could try a variable capacitor. The performance may improve quite a bit after you perform an alignment. I know you're very aware how important it is not to break anything along the way. I think it sounds pretty good right now. Some of the noise that your picking up might be due to your sound system and computers. Also on these old radios when you have them on an isolation transformer that also induces noise into the radio.
Wow I'd almost forgotten about this project, I'm really impressed with your patience and the sympathetic way you tackled this, it's coming along really nicely !
Impressive. After your first video where you found the missing coil and all the butchering I would have given up on it. I am slowly restoring a Bell 2122-C tube amp that I purchased at a yard sale for $20.
I was listening loudly when you fired up the AM band, the noise blew my laptop's left speaker and now it buzzes when I play music. just shows that the radio still plays well :p
Excellent work! Glad to see somebody besides me, after working on something for a certain amount of time, gets antsy and has to put power to it. I always feel like I violating some unwritten rule, or breaking the restoration commandment that says everything has to be perfectly put back before you can supply juice. Really cool you got those gator wires in there first try!! I usually never get that lucky.
I tend to power things up early, and many times I'll use it in an unfinished state for quite a while LOL. But it's better to have it break before you do a bunch of reassembly.
Exactly, and usually on this kind of stuff, your just fooling around anyway. Not like it's your front line stuff!!! Sometimes a new burnt smell is not that bad in the shop....as long as it's not selenium. LOL ;)~
Man Max you've been a busy little beaver last time i checked your channel for updates was your Q and A asking the questions video lol good to see one of the best youtube computer channels staying frequent!
RestoreOldRadios Thanks! If I had more time and supplies, I'd love to do restorations at the depth you do. I loved when you reproduced those Micamold caps.
Maxxarcade The Micamold reproductions were a first for me. +AMStationEngineer suggested I try to preserve or reproduce them, so he pushed me on this one, which I'm glad he did. I learned a lot during the process and will make some adjustments next time. Do you have any more vintage radio projects on the horizon? Best. Don
RestoreOldRadios Yes, probably a few! I might be restoring my coworker's old Philco after this Sparton is finished. And I have a nice RCA Radiola 60 that's been in my family for decades, along with a spare main chassis. I'm sure others will turn up in the future as well. Aside from radios, I also love working on tube amplifiers and other vintage stuff. I think I might still have a bin full of old wax paper caps from past projects. Maybe I can practice on those for learning how to do re-stuffing. I'm still nervous about the chemicals in the old electrolytics though. I actually bought modern reproductions for the multi-section caps in my H.H. Scott 222c and Zenith 7K31. But if there's any caps I definitely won't tamper with, it's the big square ones in my 1950's signal generator. I'm all but certain those are full of PCB oil.
whenever I see a old piece of technology that has been modified, the first thing I think is that somebody at some point cared about it enough to get it working again, pretty or not. its a rather sad comparison to what happens today, when something breaks most people would just dump it..
On these old radios which were typically connected to an outdoor antenna, it is not uncommon for one of the coils to be burned out by lightning -- usually the broadcast band coil, since that's the position the band switch would be in most of the time.
Yep, I figured the same thing, since there was a black mark under the chassis where the coil was. That could have been from the original power transformer or rectifier socket too though. I wish I had some good pictures of an original chassis so I could see what it's supposed to look like.
It's really a shame the radio was butchered before you got it. Once I saw the missing coil, wrong knobs, volume control, rusted chassis, etc - I would have bailed on that job. It will be interesting to see the finishing of this project including the alignment. Do you even have the proper test equipment for that ?
I think this will be a really awesome radio when it is finished. I love the looks of the cabinet. Have you thought about finding different knobs since these are not the original? Maybe something that goes better with the styling?
Aaron, really looking forward to the final video. Keep them coming: computers, radios, pro audio. Quick question. I have a 10-year-old 37" Panasonic plasma. I connected a Raspberry Pi B+ running OpenELEC Linux. No matter how I set the resolution or try to adjust the settings I can't get the overscan fixed. All other sources are perfect. Could it be that those old plasmas were never meant to be used as computer monitors?
Would it be easier to work on a Marantz amp or something like an old Sony or stand-alone Crown amp? I got a little money and thinking about tinkering with a little stereo equipment.
