Man does that old radio bring back memories. It was close to Christmas time in 1962. We had just moved off the farm and into a sort of split apartment, where mom, dad and my 2 sisters shared two rooms on the West side of the old ranch style house, then the land-lord, a very old man lived in the next two rooms, and my bed room was 1/2 of a bedroom on the East side of the house. We all shared the bath, and I shared my bedroom with a transient who had taken a job washing dishes at the Cafe where mom cooked. We moved to town so my 2 sisters could attend High School, I rode out to the country school with the teacher, who had to come through town to get to the old country schoolhouse. At any rate, I would have been 10 years old I guess, if memory serves. There had been this Christmas party at the Cafe where mom and my room mate worked, and it ran late. The adults were all very drunk, of course we children remained home as it would not have been right for us to attend. When all were settled down, my room mate and dad had a fight, and dad cold coked him then put him in bed. About twenty minutes later, my room mate shouted for me to wake up, so I did and turned on the bare bulb that served to light the whole room. He had slashed both of his wrists, I was a bit scared at seeing all that blood, and shouted across the house for dad to come. HE shouted back for me to shut the fuck up and go to sleep, but I persisted till at last he came across, seeing what my room mate had done, dad used my belt, and his to put tourniquets on the room mates arms, and slowed the spurting down to a mile flow. Dad sent my mom next door to call the police and ambulance since the building had no phone service. That was the last I saw of my room mate, they sewed him up then locked him in the City Jail until he could see the Judge. The Judge gave him a $500.00 fine, which was a LOT back in '62, then suspended the fine on the condition that my room mate catch the next train out of town and never return. What, you may ask, does this have to do with anything? Well my room mate had that very radio sitting on his dresser in our room, and we used to love listening to it. I wished I could have kept it, but the police officers came to the room and packed all his things into a box to leave town with him. Of course his radio was in much worse condition since he carried it with him in a duffel bag. Funny how a thing like that will bring back such memories. I did, however get the best Christmas Present that Christmas, I think Dad was trying to help me forget the whole mess, even though I kept sleeping in that room after they cleaned up the blood. I got a very nice "REAL SMOKING" electric train set, man that was cool, you put drops of oil down the smoke stack and the heat of the electric motor made it smoke, and a small piston puffed the smoke out the stack. Very cool for '62.
Probably the best radio restoration channel. I love the way when something smokes, he giggles, instead of using profanities heard on other UA-cam channels. I restore radios, and to get as good as this channel, I may change my attire, gotta try something to get this good!
That nut driver handle you used to tighten down the clamp on the 'lytics is BEAUTIFUL. What a treasure. Dear glasslinger... you are the most amazing engineer / technician / mechanically talented person I've ever seen.. in addition to my friend Joe, who builds robotics. But can he work with glass? No. Can he build a working vacuum tube? 'Fraid not! I'm a newly retired biomedical engineer - and I'm in awe of your knowledge and skills. Thank you for all the wonderful and educational work you do and share with the world
Well done you don't see many engineers spending much time cleaning the item they have just fixed.Reminded me back in the early 60s when I was an apprentice after fixing an old Echo or Ferranti TV I used to take the CRT out and clean the tube face and also the safety glass inside and outside, what a job that was. In those days most houses in Belfast had a small living room, and that was heated by a coal fire some TVsI could barely see a picture through the dirt.
Your work room is just like mine. Everything in its place and a place for most everything. I specialise in valve amplifiers as there is no one left to repair them. We are last of a breed.
What a talent!! I'm sure you could make a new rectum for Charlie McCarthy. Keep those great repair videos coming! It's good education plus we are saving a small part of the old world.
First you need to know what needs to be done, then have the tools and materials required, and finally the skills and experience to do it. Glasslinger has all three. Excellent viewing.
Every time you put out a video i cant wait to sit down and watch it. Always great content. When i was a young lad an old man i made friends with taught me a lot about electronics repair. Sadly he passed away a year after i met him. I tinkered with electronics until i got my first computer then moved into software development. Been writing code for 25 years but want to get back into electronics. Vintage is my favorite though. Thanks so much for sharing your repairs with us.
My favorite radio repair expert! I really enjoy watching you work, you are the best, thank you for ever single video you upload. Love this radio! Ron, Had to add in how much I appreciate learning about using a Simpson or Triplett analog meter to test capacitors, never knew this and it will be a big help in the future. Did notice that you needed to pull the cap out of the circuit but that’s alright. Thank you, Buddy
Great Video. Reminds me of all the yard sale radio sets I gave my neighbor radio repair whiz to have a go at. A larger speaker like this has meant a better set to novice me.
Love your techniques and tricks to get these treasures going again! Gotta love Zenith! It sounds great. Thanks for the warnings about steel wool. Tin whiskers galore if you don't follow this advice!!
Nice seeing a vintage radio brought back to life and correctly repaired so it can be used on a regular basis for many year's, it probably hadn't been switched on in 40 years, back in those days people kept stuff even when it wasn't working,today we need to make room so dispose of old tech quickly. Not necessarily a bad thing, if it wasn't for modern equipment and cheap parts plus all the wizardry of UA-cam and hi tech digital cameras, things like this would not be being done or watched by people. 150,000 views or more, imagine telling people you are going to mend an old radio, you wouldn't have that many visit you and watch..
Awsome work as always, and lot of useful information. I want to send You a special thank for enlightening people about the capacitors, when they need to be changed and not.
That was high tech less than a century ago! Zenith made great stuff and the world of electronics has progressed scary fast, software-defined radios boggle my little brain!
Great video! I've never seen that model before but what a great idea to use the battery tube lineup to keep it from being an oven. Too bad they didn't have a battery pack for it for portability.
Cool set. Setchell-Carlson also made a radio with the LV/portable radio tubes. In that case they made an intercom/radio and if it was off you could push the talk button (or listen one) and it would be almost "Instant-On" due to the direct-heater tubes. I had one years ago and it worked great!
great video as always :-) BTW - I have replaced the batteries in my old cordless drills with Lithium (18650s from old laptop batteries) and very impressed with the results. You can get a balance charger on ebay for around $20
Have ever done a tour of all your radios on you tube? I would like to see them. I once I new a guy who had an enormous collection of communications sets a whole large bedroom with racks and racks of stuff.
I asked this last video, I think 🤔... You know if Ron’s got boxes of knobs and drawers and capacitors like we saw and had to go to the attic to find the one knob he needed, that he has a collection of radios to die for!
@@budandbean1 yes love to see them maybe one day. The guy with the communication sets had the all wired and antenna connected it was amazing to go around and list to them , I don't know what his electric would be!
Wonderful restoration. If it wasn't done previously, probably should put around a 75 ohm dropping resistor in series with that silicon rectifier, B+ is probably a little high.
Another great video keep them coming they're very interesting I wish I can get you to work on some of my projects I watched you make a vacuum tube I never seen that before
I found a product called Scratch Doctor that is for polishing scratches out of car paint but I have used it on plastic and have cleaned up chrome and the finish on one of my old radios. I wonder what it would do to Bakelite? Would probably do nice job.
I had a large green Zenith am ac-dc radio that used the same tubes It used a large battery and worked on ac as well. It developed silver mica disease and the 1R5 went bad. They wanted 30 dollars for that tube back in the mid 70s. I scrapped it for parts
Interesting. I have not ever seen any of the old seleniums with leakage unless they were obviously blown up. The radio actually played fine with the selenium rectifier only, but the B+ was only 75 volts. With the diode it was 130, which gave less distortion in the sound.
Measuring the resistance of a capacitor, is that a good test? I have a capacitance meter that I've been blindly trusting for a while, if there are better ways it would be great to try out
Ron, Do you make a note of the original cap and resistor values that you replace, and place this list in the radio, for future repair techs? My concern is component stacking, if the next tech only replaces components, without checking a schematic. I'm guessing you only occasionally look at a schematic. Electronics were simpler back then. I miss those days. Take care.
I'm an advocate of REFORMING GOOD power supply electrolytic capacitors. I first check ESR. If it's low like it would be, if good, I reform the capacitor with a Sprague Tel-Ohmike which has a current limiting resistor. Or I bring the radio up on a variac to prevent excess capacitor current and overheat the capacitor. In my experience aluminum canned 'lytics retain their moisture while paper wrapped 'lytics are always dried out and no good. I've had about 90% good results - saves unnecessary work and jammed in parts on miniaturized radios like this one. My biggest concern over grossly oversized input filters (220uF instead of 80uF) in a solid state rectified radio is the increased wear rate on the power switch - replacements are mostly unobtainable these days.
Rare to see a radio using the battery tube set that did not have the option to run on batteries. Power consumption should be about a third of a standard AA5 as the filaments only draw 50ma vs the 150ma of an AA5. Of course some AA5's had a different tube set that had a 100ma heater current. A large power resistor is still needed to drop the voltage for the filaments and that will consume most of the radio's power. Please list the radio model number for those playing along at home! If those batteries are NiCad or NiMh, you're better off cracking them open and replacing the cells with good ones.
Man does that old radio bring back memories. It was close to Christmas time in 1962. We had just moved off the farm and into a sort of split apartment, where mom, dad and my 2 sisters shared two rooms on the West side of the old ranch style house, then the land-lord, a very old man lived in the next two rooms, and my bed room was 1/2 of a bedroom on the East side of the house. We all shared the bath, and I shared my bedroom with a transient who had taken a job washing dishes at the Cafe where mom cooked. We moved to town so my 2 sisters could attend High School, I rode out to the country school with the teacher, who had to come through town to get to the old country schoolhouse. At any rate, I would have been 10 years old I guess, if memory serves. There had been this Christmas party at the Cafe where mom and my room mate worked, and it ran late. The adults were all very drunk, of course we children remained home as it would not have been right for us to attend. When all were settled down, my room mate and dad had a fight, and dad cold coked him then put him in bed. About twenty minutes later, my room mate shouted for me to wake up, so I did and turned on the bare bulb that served to light the whole room. He had slashed both of his wrists, I was a bit scared at seeing all that blood, and shouted across the house for dad to come. HE shouted back for me to shut the fuck up and go to sleep, but I persisted till at last he came across, seeing what my room mate had done, dad used my belt, and his to put tourniquets on the room mates arms, and slowed the spurting down to a mile flow. Dad sent my mom next door to call the police and ambulance since the building had no phone service. That was the last I saw of my room mate, they sewed him up then locked him in the City Jail until he could see the Judge. The Judge gave him a $500.00 fine, which was a LOT back in '62, then suspended the fine on the condition that my room mate catch the next train out of town and never return. What, you may ask, does this have to do with anything? Well my room mate had that very radio sitting on his dresser in our room, and we used to love listening to it. I wished I could have kept it, but the police officers came to the room and packed all his things into a box to leave town with him. Of course his radio was in much worse condition since he carried it with him in a duffel bag. Funny how a thing like that will bring back such memories. I did, however get the best Christmas Present that Christmas, I think Dad was trying to help me forget the whole mess, even though I kept sleeping in that room after they cleaned up the blood. I got a very nice "REAL SMOKING" electric train set, man that was cool, you put drops of oil down the smoke stack and the heat of the electric motor made it smoke, and a small piston puffed the smoke out the stack. Very cool for '62.
Probably the best radio restoration channel. I love the way when something smokes, he giggles, instead of using profanities heard on other UA-cam channels. I restore radios, and to get as good as this channel, I may change my attire, gotta try something to get this good!
You have such a craze in what you do that it's contagious. That's why it's therapeutic to watch your videos.
I appreciate these videos. Thanks for staying here on UA-cam . Great little radio!
That nut driver handle you used to tighten down the clamp on the 'lytics is BEAUTIFUL. What a treasure. Dear glasslinger... you are the most amazing engineer / technician / mechanically talented person I've ever seen.. in addition to my friend Joe, who builds robotics. But can he work with glass? No. Can he build a working vacuum tube? 'Fraid not! I'm a newly retired biomedical engineer - and I'm in awe of your knowledge and skills. Thank you for all the wonderful and educational work you do and share with the world
Well done you don't see many engineers spending much time cleaning the item they have just fixed.Reminded me back in the early 60s when I was an apprentice after fixing an old Echo or Ferranti TV I used to take the CRT out and clean the tube face and also the safety glass inside and outside, what a job that was. In those days most houses in Belfast had a small living room, and that was heated by a coal fire some TVsI could barely see a picture through the dirt.
Your work room is just like mine. Everything in its place and a place for most everything. I specialise in valve amplifiers as there is no one left to repair them. We are last of a breed.
Thanks for posting, it’s a pleasure to see another video! That Bakelite Zenith, nicknamed the Owl by collectors, is a great looking little radio.
What a talent!! I'm sure you could make a new rectum for Charlie McCarthy. Keep those great repair videos coming! It's good education plus we are saving a small part of the old world.
First you need to know what needs to be done, then have the tools and materials required, and finally the skills and experience to do it. Glasslinger has all three. Excellent viewing.
Always a great video. Thanks for sharing and still inspiring .
Beautiful radio and great job.
What a cute mini radio,,love it,,great job Ron
Every time you put out a video i cant wait to sit down and watch it. Always great content. When i was a young lad an old man i made friends with taught me a lot about electronics repair. Sadly he passed away a year after i met him. I tinkered with electronics until i got my first computer then moved into software development. Been writing code for 25 years but want to get back into electronics. Vintage is my favorite though. Thanks so much for sharing your repairs with us.
What a lovely radio I admire your work
My favorite radio repair expert! I really enjoy watching you work, you are the best, thank you for ever single video you upload. Love this radio!
Ron, Had to add in how much I appreciate learning about using a Simpson or Triplett analog meter to test capacitors, never knew this and it will be a big help in the future. Did notice that you needed to pull the cap out of the circuit but that’s alright. Thank you, Buddy
Nice sounding Little Radio, Great repair like always
Great Video. Reminds me of all the yard sale radio sets I gave my neighbor radio repair whiz to have a go at. A larger speaker like this has meant a better set to novice me.
That must be one of the first to use a component combination. What a great little design! Glad to see that it went to someone who will love it!
I just love the way you say Okay when you fix something! I could listen to you forever.
Gasslinger skill level 12 .I love your videos a great learning tool , thanks for shareing.
Love your techniques and tricks to get these treasures going again! Gotta love Zenith! It sounds great. Thanks for the warnings about steel wool. Tin whiskers galore if you don't follow this advice!!
That is a CLEAN radio looking at it.
Thanks again. A pleasurable trip down memory lane!
Nice seeing a vintage radio brought back to life and correctly repaired so it can be used on a regular basis for many year's, it probably hadn't been switched on in 40 years, back in those days people kept stuff even when it wasn't working,today we need to make room so dispose of old tech quickly.
Not necessarily a bad thing, if it wasn't for modern equipment and cheap parts plus all the wizardry of UA-cam and hi tech digital cameras, things like this would not be being done or watched by people.
150,000 views or more, imagine telling people you are going to mend an old radio, you wouldn't have that many visit you and watch..
Excellent! Thanks, I enjoy all of your videos Ron.
Simply wonderful to watch.
NICE LITTLE ZENITH.GREAT REPAIR AND Alignment Job.THANK YOU FOR Another GREAT VIDEO. 73 KI7DYM
hi glasslinger good to see a new video to watch in injoy them alot
And a awesome job on that radio !
Great video to watch before I go to bed cheers .
Nice that you managed to find a matching knob!
yippee, another one, thank you, Professor!
Nice seeing you again :)
You are an Outstanding person. I love the way you explain your trouble shooting. Thank you for the upload.
All my best.
Bobby
Your one of a kind, all the very best from the UK.
Awsome work as always, and lot of useful information. I want to send You a special thank for enlightening people about the capacitors, when they need to be changed and not.
Nice little radio, I always wanted one for my shop.
Told you a billion time, Roy, don't exaggerate... 10,000 knobs is a good number!
That was high tech less than a century ago!
Zenith made great stuff and the world of electronics has progressed scary fast, software-defined radios boggle my little brain!
I love watching your videos, maybe one day could you please show us your collection.
Great video! I've never seen that model before but what a great idea to use the battery tube lineup to keep it from being an oven. Too bad they didn't have a battery pack for it for portability.
That's a nice little radio. I bet you'll keep that one.
years of smoke come rolling off...great vid
Cool set. Setchell-Carlson also made a radio with the LV/portable radio tubes. In that case they made an intercom/radio and if it was off you could push the talk button (or listen one) and it would be almost "Instant-On" due to the direct-heater tubes. I had one years ago and it worked great!
great video as always :-)
BTW - I have replaced the batteries in my old cordless drills with Lithium (18650s from old laptop batteries) and very impressed with the results. You can get a balance charger on ebay for around $20
Have ever done a tour of all your radios on you tube? I would like to see them. I once I new a guy who had an enormous collection of communications sets a whole large bedroom with racks and racks of stuff.
I asked this last video, I think 🤔... You know if Ron’s got boxes of knobs and drawers and capacitors like we saw and had to go to the attic to find the one knob he needed, that he has a collection of radios to die for!
@@budandbean1 yes love to see them maybe one day. The guy with the communication sets had the all wired and antenna connected it was amazing to go around and list to them , I don't know what his electric would be!
Olá boa tarde! SAÚDE! Não falar inglês, estou assistindo os vídeos, parabenizando pelo seu trabalho na manutenção dos rádios valvulado.
Wonderful restoration. If it wasn't done previously, probably should put around a 75 ohm dropping resistor in series with that silicon rectifier, B+ is probably a little high.
I checked it and the first capacitor was at 122 volts and the second at 100 volts. Right about normal. Good idea to check it though!
Always a pleasure to see you work
I am def addicted to your channel, interesting, relaxing and you turn out some gems!!!! Thanks!
Absolutely beautiful work :). How did you aquire so many various knobs?
Thanks for the video. Love your troubleshooting style.
Another great video keep them coming they're very interesting I wish I can get you to work on some of my projects I watched you make a vacuum tube I never seen that before
Thank you for another excellent video you certainly know the game.....................................Berni
As usual a Brilliant video!!
Thanks for such wonderful videos, I cant tell you how much I enjoy watching and learning. Have a great Christmas and new year.
Fantastic video ,great to see these Lost Treasures as they get rarer
My OCD would compel me to sort out that collection of knobs. 😊
Might take you some time. . . . . .
You make working in those tight spaces look so easy...how do you remember where you cut leads?
Wow, what year is this radio??? It looks to be in great shape and even better when you are done working your magic!
I love all of your video,s.Keep on making more.
Ja vi um radio valvulado bem pequeno assim só não conheço a marca. Quem era a dona dele ainda está viva! Rio de Janeiro Brasil
Great little project Ron - ATB
another great video :) . and i see we have the same taste in scopes !
I found a product called Scratch Doctor that is for polishing scratches out of car paint but I have used it on plastic and have cleaned up chrome and the finish on one of my old radios. I wonder what it would do to Bakelite? Would probably do nice job.
Howdy , hope you had a great thanksgiving and a merry Christmas ! A fan of yours from Crosby TX ... Steveo
Абалдеть-второй Верёвкин!
Hi ron another supper video .glad you kept the mistake in proves you are human
Ah man, if you have to burp you gotta excuse yourself 😂
Good one, Ron. Miss the soldering gun on this one, guess because the radio is so small.......
I love yore videos you made my Friday! greetings from Sweden! when I feel dull I watch one off yore videos and I feel that i still have a purpose-
I note that the SMD 'clickey' soldering iron has been replaced by a smaller version, more appropriate for working on a little Zenith radio.
Zenith the quality went in before the name went on
If you listen earlier on in the video it also sounded Like he farted and then giggled
I had a large green Zenith am ac-dc radio that used the same tubes It used a large battery and worked on ac as well. It developed silver mica disease and the 1R5 went bad. They wanted 30 dollars for that tube back in the mid 70s. I scrapped it for parts
Nice work. But are you leaving the selenium in-circuit? Even shunted with a Si diode, they can sometimes overheat from excess reverse leakage
Interesting. I have not ever seen any of the old seleniums with leakage unless they were obviously blown up. The radio actually played fine with the selenium rectifier only, but the B+ was only 75 volts. With the diode it was 130, which gave less distortion in the sound.
Wonderful as usual.
Measuring the resistance of a capacitor, is that a good test? I have a capacitance meter that I've been blindly trusting for a while, if there are better ways it would be great to try out
Thanks for the video, Ron! I love your work! Please make som new tubes!
Another informative and entertaining video. Thanks & cheers!
Ron,
Do you make a note of the original cap and resistor values that you replace, and place this list in the radio, for future repair techs? My concern is component stacking, if the next tech only replaces components, without checking a schematic.
I'm guessing you only occasionally look at a schematic. Electronics were simpler back then. I miss those days. Take care.
Nice oscillator trick! Thanks!
I'm an advocate of REFORMING GOOD power supply electrolytic capacitors. I first check ESR. If it's low like it would be, if good, I reform the capacitor with a Sprague Tel-Ohmike which has a current limiting resistor. Or I bring the radio up on a variac to prevent excess capacitor current and overheat the capacitor. In my experience aluminum canned 'lytics retain their moisture while paper wrapped 'lytics are always dried out and no good. I've had about 90% good results - saves unnecessary work and jammed in parts on miniaturized radios like this one.
My biggest concern over grossly oversized input filters (220uF instead of 80uF) in a solid state rectified radio is the increased wear rate on the power switch - replacements are mostly unobtainable these days.
Hey friend thanks for the video,you really make my day!
Alex.
Do you ever take on larger more complex radios like a Hallicrafters SX-100? Thanks. CAL
Yes. But my specialty is the old wood radios pre-1950. Mr. Carlson does a lot of the modern stuff.
Thanks for the video Ron.
Did you change outfit halfway through the video 😅 I remember at the start I was thinking, that's a cool sleeve, then all of a sudden, plaid!
Beautiful beautiful beautiful OMG! :o
Fantastic video. Thank you.
All those knobs you have a lot of ,sell on eBay for a lot each, can be your retirement plan? Amazing collection of parts .
Very nice job. Where do you buy your capacitors from?
Random bag of Yittrium Oxide just laying around. Yeah I keep that on my bench too, lol...
Bravo! A perfect fix.
That’s really fascinating!
nice to see it turned out ......... ok!!!
That's one cute little radio
You are the king of knobs.
I suggest we all take a shot everytime he says "ok"
What about our dinner plans ❤❤❤
I love that little wood handled nut driver you have there. Home made? Brand?
The plastic handle on my 1/4 inch driver broke up. So I took an old wood screwdriver and used the handle. Epoxied it on! I like that driver best!
Thank you!
Rare to see a radio using the battery tube set that did not have the option to run on batteries. Power consumption should be about a third of a standard AA5 as the filaments only draw 50ma vs the 150ma of an AA5. Of course some AA5's had a different tube set that had a 100ma heater current. A large power resistor is still needed to drop the voltage for the filaments and that will consume most of the radio's power.
Please list the radio model number for those playing along at home!
If those batteries are NiCad or NiMh, you're better off cracking them open and replacing the cells with good ones.