# vintage radios



## Twig Man (Aug 9, 2012)

Does anyone on the forum collect or repair old radios. I picked up three the other day and one works but the others dont. I love this old stuff.


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## Brink (Aug 9, 2012)

Before the fireman says I know all about those, ('cause they're old) I don't.

But they are way cool, nonetheless.


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## Twig Man (Aug 9, 2012)

One of them actually works. They have tubes and once it warms up it comes on  Two f them need repair


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## Mike1950 (Aug 9, 2012)

The one on the bottom left- I have listened to one just like it. My grandparents were in a spot that did not receive TV and gramps and I listen to baseball. Thanks for the pics.


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## Twig Man (Aug 9, 2012)

Mike the one on the bottom left is a zenith, the one on the right is a halton and the one one top is a rca victor


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## Mike1950 (Aug 9, 2012)

Theirs was a Zenith. I think grandma listened to Perry como or Lawrence Welk- brings back memories- Thanks a bunch Gramps has been gone since 79 and I still miss him and his stories...............


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## Kevin (Aug 9, 2012)

Twig Man said:


> Does anyone on the forum collect or repair old radios. I picked up three the other day and one works but the others dont. I love this old stuff.



Are you wanting to sell one or more, or just get the non-working ones repaired?


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## ripjack13 (Aug 9, 2012)

An AM radio? Is that when you listen to the radio after you wake up and are having coffee in the am right?
:rofl2: :wacko1:


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## Twig Man (Aug 9, 2012)

Kevin said:


> Twig Man said:
> 
> 
> > Does anyone on the forum collect or repair old radios. I picked up three the other day and one works but the others dont. I love this old stuff.
> ...



Kevin I would like to sell them. If I cant sell them I thought I would have them repaired and then try to sell them. Of course the price I would ask for them would be higher.


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## Twig Man (Aug 9, 2012)

Mike1950 said:


> Theirs was a Zenith. I think grandma listened to Perry como or Lawrence Welk- brings back memories- Thanks a bunch Gramps has been gone since 79 and I still miss him and his stories...............



Mike I have them on Craigslist right now. If they dont sell in a couple of days Send me your address and I will send you the zenith. The memories you have of your grandaddy are similar to mine and I would like to see you have it.


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## Mike1950 (Aug 9, 2012)

John, Thanks but you don't have to do that. Have plenty of stuff and memories of Gramps. Get it fixed and give it to son, grandson or ? so they can have a memory of days gone past when folks sat at home after dinner and listened to the news or ? on the radio. It was a very different world. Thanks though for the picture............. That was all I needed.


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## Twig Man (Aug 9, 2012)

Mike1950 said:


> John, Thanks but you don't have to do that. Have plenty of stuff and memories of Gramps. Get it fixed and give it to son, grandson or ? so they can have a memory of days gone past when folks sat at home after dinner and listened to the news or ? on the radio. It was a very different world. Thanks though for the picture............. That was all I needed.



I know I dont have to do it Mike I just think you would appreciate it more than them. And thats what this old stuff is all about, appreciating the good ole days.


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## firemedic (Aug 10, 2012)

Brink, don't lie... You know your first paying job was working barefoot in a carriage factory.


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## Dane Fuller (Aug 10, 2012)

firemedic said:


> Brink, don't lie... You know your first paying job was working barefoot in a carriage factory.



Now that right there is funny.


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## Kevin (Aug 10, 2012)

There's a chance I can repair them John. I have a few tubes left but most likely not one that may be out if in fact it is a tube, but tubes can still be had and the tubes in those radios would be fairly common ones since the radios were made by the hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions, and they would have used mostly off the shelf tubes anyway. 

It's more likely not a bad tube though probably something simple. If you want to ship them to me I'll take a look at them. I enjoy T&R electronics especially old tube types. When I was in the USCG we still had a couple of old tube type radios that I worked on. An old UHF that had not only tubes but open blade capacitors. That was always a fun (and scary) tune. 

Within a year of me being at my first duty station we phased the tube radios out and were all "transistorized". It was about time too I think we were the last service still to use old tube types except some of the specialized army field units that had tube backups in case of EMP attacks. 

Anyway if you're interested in getting them working be glad to take a look no charge. No promises either but no charge either way fixed or not.


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## Dane Fuller (Aug 10, 2012)

Kevin said:


> ...When I was in the USCG we still had a couple of old tube type radios that I worked on. An old UHF that had not only tubes but open blade capacitors. That was always a fun (and scary) tune.......



I bet a hundred pennies that was the Coastie version of the AN/SRC-20,21. That was my "C" school. Tuned the fins with a glorified toothpick! You'd lick your fingers & touch the tubes to see which ones were hot/cold. The cold one was where to start taking readings...


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## Kevin (Aug 10, 2012)

Dane Fuller said:


> Kevin said:
> 
> 
> > ...When I was in the USCG we still had a couple of old tube type radios that I worked on. An old UHF that had not only tubes but open blade capacitors. That was always a fun (and scary) tune.......
> ...



No that doesn't ring a bell. I believe the designation was the AN/ARC-51. I didn't work on it as much as the APN-95 color radar and the other radars we had. I was a radar wizard - loved radars. That was my baby, but we had over 100 nav/comm/radar units that we worked on. What I remember most was the open blades had 460VRF runing through and of course you cannot tune them cold you had to tune them hot. The "toothpick" you're referring to is the ceramic tuning tool you had to use to push or pull each blade toward or away to the one next to it, which of course would change the capacitance of both spaces on either side of it, which meant you then had to "tune" the next one, and the next one, domino effect. 

One of the safety procedures was to always keep the outer pad of you hand laid on the chassis so that when you got hit, and you tune them enough you'll get hit, the signal would go through your right hand and into the chassis to ground and not go through your body. You were not supposed to use your left hand in case the signal when through your chest to your feet and through the safety mats, it might miss your heart if you used your right hand - so was the theory. 

I didn't like working on that damn thing and did so probably less than 20 times the whole time I was stationed there.

Our shop was funny. At one end we had the state of the art APS-127 TI all weather color search radar which I operated from my avionics position in the bask of the Falcon (right between the fan jets!), and in the middle of the shop we had "the tube rack" where all the old radios and gear was still being worked on. 

:lolol:


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## Twig Man (Aug 10, 2012)

Kevin what a generous offer and I will take you up on it!! I will send them out to you. Thank you so very much!!

Twig


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## Dane Fuller (Aug 10, 2012)

Kevin said:


> Dane Fuller said:
> 
> 
> > Kevin said:
> ...



Don't mean to hijack the thread but it's rare that I find somebody that's been there done that too.
I wonder if the AN/ARC-51 was the 20's big brother?

Yes, the fins were bent back and forth to tuned it across its frequency band. IF you really tweaked it in on the bottom side it would be WAY out on the top so it was almost an art to get it to pump the expected wattage out across the board. Our toothpicks were wood, shaved flat on one end and a point on the other.

The radio was usually hooked to an antenna tuner that used a rotary phone dial to dial in the frequency via servos connected to a tuneable wave guide. I still hold "C" school the test record it for the fastest diagnosis & repair on it. The reason I still hold it is because our class was the very last class ever. It was obsolete & out of the fleet by the time I hit my first duty station....LOL

Speaking of radars & taking a hit...While diagnosing a fault in a SPS-10 radar, I had a 600v charged capacitor discharge through my hand one night. I learned 2 things. 1 - The touching the chasis with the outside of your hand works. 2 - Touch everything twice with the discharge probe BEFORE hooking up your leads.


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## Kevin (Aug 10, 2012)

Dane Fuller said:


> ...
> I wonder if the AN/ARC-51 was the 20's big brother?



I don't think so the 51 is a small unit. It was the UHF in our HH-3Fs. I goggled your ARN-20 that thing is big. We had smaller more compact equipment in our helos and of course the HU25 was all transistorized - the then state of the art stuff. 



Dane Fuller said:


> ...
> Speaking of radars & taking a hit...While diagnosing a fault in a SPS-10 radar, I had a 600v charged capacitor discharge through my hand one night.



Heck we used to charge up any big _uf_ cap and wait until someone walked into the shop and toss it at them saying "hey check this out" and KABOOM! ZAP! WHAMO! and laugh our asses off. You could only get someone once or twice though before they stopped catching things that us tweets threw at them (and even each other). 

:lolol:


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## Kevin (Aug 10, 2012)

Twig Man said:


> Kevin what a generous offer and I will take you up on it!! I will send them out to you. Thank you so very much!!
> 
> Twig



John I just appreciate the opportunity to work on them. I never get to work on old gear any more, and if by chance I can get one or both working it will be very rewarding for me. That alone will be my payment - I hope I can come through for you.


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## Mike1950 (Aug 10, 2012)

Funny My father was a electronics technician- learned on radios before TV. Moved on to TV's. we had a color TV when the only thing in color was Bonanza, Wide world of color (Disney) and NBC news. Always wanted me to do it -I built a crystal radio by 10 and the next year a tube radio. Drove me nuts. I wanted to build things but not out of tubes and wires. We could never connect that way. Still remember his Ham radio call letters though K7ZJT.


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## Kevin (Sep 6, 2012)

John,

I got the radios today. I couldn't stand it so I cracked one open. The news could be worse - but not much. 

[attachment=10257]

[attachment=10258]

When I dropped the access panel two resistor jacket halves fell out onto the panel . . . 

[attachment=10259]


They came off the actual resistor itself which you can see pointed to by the red arrow on the right (without circle). That's not a big deal, except unless we can find a schematic for it, we can't figure out what to replace it with because the halves had the color codes burnt off. For example the resistor next to it (blue arrow) is an Orange, orange, gold, silver which means it's a 3.3Ω with 10% tolerance. But the bands were gone due to excessive heat (which is why the jacket split in half). Which told me I'd find other heat-related problems and it didn't take but a few seconds . . . 

[attachment=10260]

Taking a closer look we see all the heat damage. The red circle shows the separation of a lead from the inductor to the heat sink. Any circuit using a heat sink like this is usually in the power supply and this one is no exception, but it trashed some other circuitry around it. My theory is that the resistor lost it's jacket first, then it started heating up even more and before the lead could melt off the inductor of course it fried a bunch of the wiring protective coating in the areas show within the dotted green circles . . . . 

[attachment=10261]

The green circle to the left of the words "HEAT SINK" shows where the is a lead connector, but no lead. It almost looks like to me repairs have already been attempted on this radio, but abandoned. that lead was heated by a solder gun to remove the lead to wherever it went, but it is wholly missing. It should be "hanging around" somewhere if it had become disconnected due to heat. 

It's going to be an extensive T&R most likely just due to parts availability and I really need a schematic. That's probably available though but I haven't searched yet. I don't mind doing this, but it would take weeks or most likely even months of spending a little time here and there on it, and chasing down parts etc. Then we could finally get it all back together and find out something else smokes - not uncommon with this era of vintage electronics. 

It could be a hidden cold solder joint (as you can see these radios were all built by hand-soldering humans - heres where robots are actually far superior) causing all of this and not looking suspicious, for example. It could be a series of rabbit holes before getting it fixed and this particular radio is not really worth all that. 


Even though this one should not be pursued, I want to thank you for the opportunity to troubleshoot it. It was loads of fun . . . for about fifteen minutes start to finish. Posting this update took twice as long so don't worry I didn't put any time into it to speak of. I'll open the next one and hope we have better luck!

:irishjig::irishjig::irishjig:


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## DKMD (Sep 6, 2012)

I don't know anything about electronics or old radios, but I noticed one of the pieces says Zenith. Here's a link I found for schematics on old Zenith radios:

http://www.nostalgiaair.org/Resources/458/T0000458.htm

Looks like there are a bunch of others accessible through the main page, and there's a forum for questions as well.


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## Kevin (Sep 6, 2012)

Looks like a great site David, but fixing the radio is not the problem it can be done. It's just not worth it with the problems that this one has - at least in my opinion. You must remember I have it sitting right in front of me just as you would have a wrecked leg needing repair .. . . . . . 

:i_dunno:


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## DKMD (Sep 6, 2012)

Kevin said:


> Looks like a great site David, but fixing the radio is not the problem it can be done. It's just not worth it with the problems that this one has - at least in my opinion. You must remember I have it sitting right in front of me just as you would have a wrecked leg needing repair .. . . . . .
> 
> :i_dunno:



Does the radio have good insurance?


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## Mike1950 (Sep 6, 2012)

If no insurance I think you amputate the darn thing.


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## Twig Man (Sep 6, 2012)

Kevin, Glad they arrived. Please take your time and have fun with it. If it is a terminal case thats ok too. If you can fix them please keep one for yourself.


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## Kevin (Sep 7, 2012)

I have your Halton working at least intermittently. More on that off and I think I see where the problem is. I won't have time to mess with it any more until Sunday probably. I'm certain I can get it working like new, but I will also have to restring the tuning mechanism. It's kind of tedious without a diagram but I can do it - shouldn't be hard to locate waxed cord if I can't make this one get some traction. I'll try a re-string before trying some stickum. If the restring and stickum down't work I'll have to track down some new , more pliable cord. This one is at least 67 years old after all. 

This is a fabulous looking radio once restored. Many vintage items are worth more if they are left untouched AFA restoration because collectors want the patina or the aged look, but this radio is selling for around $100 fully restored. I don't really understand that either. It's truly rare. If I were you I'd refinish it and keep it out in your shop tuned to your favorite rap station. 


This is what it will look like once the cabinet is restored. It's got that simple beauty that a lot things had back then. 

[attachment=10344]


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## Twig Man (Sep 7, 2012)

Kevin, I think your right about refinishing it. That Halton would work a tad bit but took a long time to warm up. As for rap what is that? I cant thank you enough for working on these. Would love to get that zenith working a litle bit. But you pick one to keep for your efforts please it would do my heart good for you to have one


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## Kevin (Sep 7, 2012)

John that Zenith is going to take some serious hours. I really don't have that kind of time right now and don't know when I'll ever get it. I wish I could though I love working on these old tube type equipment. I have an 0-scope but it needs to be sent off for calibration, but I would need a function generator and a good modern power supply also to fix the Zenith. I was hoping for something simple on both of them but we only got it on one - the Halston. 

I do not want one of the radios John it's just fun to get to work on them. Do you want me to send the cabinet to you for refinishing, and you can send it back and I'll put the guts in it, or if you don't want the shipping hassles you can remove the unit from the cabinet. It's not that hard on the Halston I think you can do it no problem.


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## Twig Man (Sep 7, 2012)

Kevin said:


> John that Zenith is going to take some serious hours. I really don't have that kind of time right now and don't know when I'll ever get it. I wish I could though I love working on these old tube type equipment. I have an 0-scope but it needs to be sent off for calibration, but I would need a function generator and a good modern power supply also to fix the Zenith. I was hoping for something simple on both of them but we only got it on one - the Halston.
> 
> I do not want one of the radios John it's just fun to get to work on them. Do you want me to send the cabinet to you for refinishing, and you can send it back and I'll put the guts in it, or if you don't want the shipping hassles you can remove the unit from the cabinet. It's not that hard on the Halston I think you can do it no problem.



That would be fine Kevin. I will refinish it and send it back to ya. What is the shape of the third radio?


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## Kevin (Sep 7, 2012)

The 3rd one is on the Sunday schedule at the earliest. It looks like it took a beating in shipment. John, tube radios cannot be packed like that. :no dice. more please:

When you get them back you'll see how they should be packed in the future if the need should ever arise.


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## Kenbo (Sep 7, 2012)

This may be a little off the current subject but I just wanted to post this little radio that I saw in an elderly friends home when I was in Newfoundland. There was something about it that I found charming and I had to take a picture of it. I hope I'm not hijacking your thread, I just wanted to share another radio with you.
[attachment=10353]


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## Kevin (Sep 7, 2012)

Kenbo said:


> This may be a little off the current subject but I just wanted to post this little radio that I saw in an elderly friends home when I was in Newfoundland. There was something about it that I found charming and I had to take a picture of it. I hope I'm not hijacking your thread, I just wanted to share another radio with you.



Not a hijack at all it's a vintage radio. I love it - my inexperienced guess would be most likely mid to late 60s or possibly very early 70s - beautiful piece! I don't know tube radios _per se_ as a collector, just what's in them. I.E. it's "tall" so probably has tubes not transistors.


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## Twig Man (Sep 7, 2012)

Kevin said:


> The 3rd one is on the Sunday schedule at the earliest. It looks like it took a beating in shipment. John, tube radios cannot be packed like that. :no dice. more please:
> 
> When you get them back you'll see how they should be packed in the future if the need should ever arise.



I am sorry I thought I packed it pretty tight my bad:dash2:


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## Twig Man (Sep 7, 2012)

Thanks for the post Kembo. That is a cool


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