How to fix a dead antique AM Superheterodyne 50's tube radio
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- Опубліковано 24 тра 2019
- Hello friends. I took some time today to relax, fix an old Aircastle AM radio that I picked up a few years back. A great Hamfest find. This model is fairly uncommon. It is a hot chassis radio, so you have to use extreme caution when servicing. The focus is on th Aircastle, however you will find most radios of this era are similar in construction, thus sharing the same failure modes. Hope you find value in this presentation.
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Great restoration of this vintage radio, I found this very informative.
🙏
Love the idea of using tube socket for "can" capacitors, brilliant!
Another electronic resurrection for D Lab. It may not be a very expensive or highly sought after radio, but none the less, its still a wonderful little piece of radio history that can function as intended once again thanks to D Lab. Good job Terry, I love those old little radios.
Thank you Scott, I had fun working on it. Hate to see them get tossed out. If not for the vid shoot time, I could have performed the complete repair in about 1 hour. Great hobby!
Nice shop area. I was always amazed in people who worked in very messy areas. I remember seeing lots of table radios going for $1.50 to $5.00 in the 1980’s. Not anymore! I still have some ARC5 stuff to get to one day.
Thanks! I restore table top radios from the 1940s, and Golden Age jukeboxes. Always nice to see the old stuff pulled back from the abyss.
What a cool idea to use a tube socket to hold the replacement caps!
Thanks for showing us more of the soldering process D Lab! Great video, can't wait for the next one!
I have one of those Tenma isolation/variac units. It is great, but shipping was a killer on it. It is very heavy. Thanks for this and all your videos, Terry. I appreciate your efforts to educate/entertain me. I have learned a lot from you. You are part of what is good on the internet and UA-cam.
I appreciate seeing some radio repair, it is more of my interest. I also appreciate the extra detail on the repairs and troubleshooting process.
Love the video! I like your restoration videos, Ham and broadcast radios!
Thank you for the mini tutorial! I have several old sets from the 1920's on and they all need some work. I especially like your method for replacing the electrolytic filter capacitor, I will be using it myself!
Hello D-LAb ,i really enjoy your videos over the years. Unique presentation with tons of hummor . Keep the soldering iron burning!
Will do my friend
I like to replace the 35L6 with a 50L6. I think this prolongs the life of the tubes and lets the set run a bit cooler. Today's line voltages are higher than the older line voltages. (Yes I did see that radio would work on 120V, but line here is 125-130V.
BTW,
The real reason radios hum is they don't know the words to the song. :)
Hey man, Thats a great idea, yes, the line voltage is much higher these days. I will give that a try.
The tube characteristics aren't identical; the 50L6 is a higher gain and higher power tube, and has different bias points for the same plate current. However, they are probably close enough to each other to work in most circuits, especially if you use a slightly weak 50L6.
@@lwilton I've never seen a situation where that substitution wouldn't work ok in a radio like this. These sets are notoriously uncritical. Problem is that the heater voltage is now pushed up to 133, which means the heater voltage will be about 10% too low. This is enough to reduce emmission in the output tube, so even a new 50L6 is going to be "slightly weak" in that circuit.
Radio repair and red wine, that gets a big thumbs up from me. Great video as always!
Love this demo, I can understand what you are doing now. I like the lesson about power transformer and no transformer. I also watched the one before with a transformer. Great job.
Loved the show Terry. I enjoy working on old classics like these myself. Just hard to find around here. Great job on the repair.
Lovely, its been decades since i heard someone speak about an AC/DC radio. Great job and video, as usual 🙂
I finally found a Tenma 72-1095 a couple months ago. I need to clean and lubricate it but it works great with my dim bulb device. Picked up an RCA 26x-3 yesterday - it has an asbestos pad. :( another great video Terry.
Excellent. You will love that Tenma variac! A very reliable instrument
Paul Reiter - Sounds familiar. I have two radios in the queue with asbestos pads, a RCA A23 and its bigger brother an M-47A. I know of two approaches to this issue, leave it alone and stabilize it with a liquid compound or remove it altogether.
I still have not decided which way to go on this.
Cheers,
Did you put the dim bulb between the Tenma and device?
Excellent explaining at the schematic with the filaments and line voltage. Great channel overall!
I’d love to have it! Talk about blast from the past.
Your power supply filter capacitor idea is great, I can think of two candidates here at my place.
I have repaired dozens of these old AC DC radios in the last five decades! Most of them were 12be6,12ba6,12av6,35w4 and 50c5 radios.
We've all been theorizing that Shortwave Girl did the actual soldering whilst you sat back with a glass of wine. She's taught you well. Nice joint. That radio looks a bit like my Crosley 56TV-0. Purists! He modified the chassis!!!
From Leo: Great repair, I kind of thought I would see you spaghetti the leads on the epoxy drop caps. I was cleaning up and found an old jar of varnish coated cloth braid spaghetti and a dried solid bottle of corona dope. Not many people remember that was a part of radio/TV service bench.
That is the way I replace caps hook, pinch 7 solder.
Great repair Terry.
Great job. .. enjoy your videos. . . .I just got through restoring a Clarion AM Farm radio. . . Ended up putting a homemade power supply inside the case to replace the 90Volt plate voltage and 1.5 volt filament voltage.
I have picked up a lot of tips and general tube servicing ideas over the many videos you have made. Our mains is 230 V so we didn't see the hot-chassis models here like you have in the US but it is interesting to see how they used series filaments to achieve operation without a transformer.
I remember buying a cool old Philco AM/ST console radio at a garage sale when I was a kid. It got one or two stations.. I also picked up an old tv.. The tubes were just plain cool. Those were the days before youtube had a video for everything. I still think transistors and crystal radios are highly misunderstood. I think energy is unlimited. No-one has to plug in the earth for it to spin. A little mix of old school tech and new school tech and next thing you know were are living in the golden age. No war. No poverty. No lack. No money. No need for money when all our needs are met in real time
Great video Terry
You amaze me, cool show, thank you, D Labs!
Thank you my friend
I liked this video. Please do more of the old am & some fm radios please.
….have a glass for me!!...another informative and entertaining video!!….. THANKS...
Interesting video. The poor radio has a new lease on life. Thank you for saving it.
Howdy Terry .. A friend of mine was just given an old AM radio .. I think it likely has a few dead tubes (doesn't power up) or something else is wrong. I noticed the wax caps all look deformed. A no transformer type. Pretty sure it may be like yours and all the filaments will add up to equal the source. The big old filter cap is on its side and has 3 wires coming out of one end. I could see Red, Green and other words on the filter cap, but couldn't see it all that well. The band is riveted to the case. There is also what looks to be vertical wax coils and two or three metal canister type coils. Quite a beast. There is an old record player that goes on the top.
Very enjoyable video with a nice amount of humour. I have subscribed. 👍😆
These are the kind of radios I love, easy fix, tubes, caps and maybe a resistor or 2 then wa la, it works. Then there are the radios when after the recap and tube check etc. ...... static, ugh, then comes the challenge of troubleshooting. Looking forward to seeing some D-lab wine inspired troubleshooting vids...... AND, still would like to see D-lab's how-to on making hot-chassis safe.
Dam you do such nice work ,and you make it look easy ,I no not it not ,but everyone will have to have a first time.then It might get easy ,I love your fix for replacing that filter cap.always learn something from you.
Columbia Crest eh, will have to try this one and the repairs of course. Another great educational and inspirational video Terry. Thumbs up :)
Great vid, Terry! Inspiring me to get my hands dirty again after a long time. I have a 1950s Regency Monitoradio VHF-high receiver that I acquired at a flea market years ago that only makes static noise. I'm going to buckle down and try to revive it. Love your videos!
Quick Draw McGraw cartoon, (horse)
@@rhondabailey4444 “Of all the heroes in legend and song, there's none as brave as El Kabong"
2 videos in a day? nice
You are officially loved by the brave little toaster my dude.
Good video, I repair and restore radios like that too. You are just like me, fix the radio and have a glass of wine to top off the repair and enjoying the results. Keep up the good job!! Don"O"
It does help us novices to watch you installing the parts I recapped several radios buy watching techs.like you ,thanks,Working on radios.are more fun then most kit building ,besides I love tube radios.and your safety tips.
Matron! Young Terry is out of bed again, and wandering the corridors!!! (Young Terry, "The Man"!)
Interesting & fun video. It might be interesting to your viewers to explain how a superheterodyne radio works and the advantages over a super regenerative radio. Also tuning the IF circuit would be fun to see. PS: Liked the tube socket/capacitor fix.
Slowly I turned... 🤣🤣🤣 Great video Terry! Cheers - Luther
Great work!
This one is a bit of a Heinz 57. It has a ground bus similar to a Stromberg-Carlson (eg. #561) and a mish-mash of mini-9 pin and octal tubes. I wonder if the 9 pins were a later addition (like a mod) or the radio was made that way... Looks like the chassis was punched for all octal sockets... And the overall physical makeup is a lot like an RCA 12X type...
Thanks for the ride along on this one.
Cheers,
It didn't look to me like it had had a previous rebuild, so it was probably original. I'd date it to the mid 1950s. Miniature tubes started becoming popular after WW II, and having a mix was pretty common.
@@lwilton - I agree. It's most likely all original. I was looking at how the case was stamped; it was stamped for octal sockets then modified later to adapt to mini 9-pin sockets. I guess it was cheaper to use up existing stock then to re-stamp new chassis.
It is likely this radio was being built through the octal-9pin transition time period which is interesting.
I raise a glass to you sir. Nice one. 🍷👍
_Well done my friend._
...my dad had a TV & radio repair business in the 50s & 60s...and into the early 70s. I grew up in his shop (Fort Lee, NJ) learning how to diagnose & fix problems with these little five tube radios....most all of the folks who brought them in for repair were in their late 20s to 60s (I guessed) in those days at the ages of 7 or 8 to early teens everyone was old (like I am now - almost 72). I used'ta know all the tubes by number..forgot most of them now - (IIRC 6 SN7 & 12 BE6)...if the sound was describes as 'scratchy' - it was the RF (or IF???) filters - if it had a 'loud hum' it was a bad filter
I don't use the hook and pinch method of connecting the parts I find winding the parts into a coil works just as good and helps if you need to take the parts out. But all in all a great video for beginners.
Excellent job:)
This is super cool! That hot chassis design makes me a bit apprehensive about tearing into one. I suppose a person could find a suitable PT to rivet into the side of a chassis like that (might look awful but at least isolate the power and properly ground it for my amateur skill level.) Thanks for the great videos!
This is so helpful for a similar radio I have!
Nice job!
One of the coolest dudes around
I love this method and sometimes I can get a org can over them with a touch of hot glue
I always write when it was serviced and when it was done as well hopefully we can save these cool radios for another 50- 60 years
I’m working on a 1927 Kent Atwater 40 came with the org field coil speaker with a huge seladium rectifier and it works but I need to replace all caps and I wanted to add a switch for a audio input for Bluetooth or CD player I’m going to have to look at some of your videos on that one if you do
The J hook method makes a lot of sense if your shipping radios out, I got a philco model 70, and the first thing I noticed it worked intermediately, popped the chassis out and there was a bad solder joint that had worked loose since I got it home
Great video, revived from being a "coaster" on the bench... :-)
Nice, job, my favorite thing!!!
Not only should they just unplug the radio before making resistance checks, they should make sure that the capacitors are discharged.
Yeahh!! A new video from D-Lab!!!
You are quite mad, you know. Love your video, filled with all the stuff I like.
I owned a shortwave receiver wired like that in the 60's .while connecting a wire antenna to cold water pipe I discovered electricity!
During power up first couple filaments burned bright then slowly went dim until sig was established...wwv and voice of America were there..and a few UK broadcasts too.
Love it. Thank you!
Great job! Next time, before you heat shrink the caps, cut a one inch disk of fiche paper to put in the top to hide the caps and insulate the cans from probing fingers.
Mais um trabalho bem feito....!!!!
You can safely touch that chassis if you make sure to plug the plug in with the chassis side to neutral, and make sure you're not touching any metal connecting to the house or ground. One way to prevent incorrect plugging in is to replace the plug or whole wire with a polarized one, and make sure the wide side of the plug wire is the one to the chassis. Yet, being safe is never a bad idea. Very nicely done. Do you realign the radio when you finish recapping? Though it sounds lie it doesn't need it.
I J-hooked the caps in a Fender twin, since it was just less of a hassle than messing with the waxy eyelet board.
I like radiotvphononut, because he puts that insulation tubing on his parts
Enjoyed the video. You really need to replace that wax cap on the antenna too though!
Great video. Not many people who get the Abbot and Costillo reference.
Yes Sir, I knew that would be a stretch. Always loved that routine. Thanks for remembering : )
At one time solder plated wire in the shape of a close wound spring was available to make those wire to wire joints.
Very good information, Thumbs up, I like the first part. Any idea on a whites 5900 di pro sl can be fixed if the meter only reads half way, even with different coils and solid silver? tks in advance.
I had one of those Aerovox wax capacitors explode like a bomb when I had a tube radio powered up outside of its case on the bench. Honestly, it was as loud as a gun, and hurt my ears!
Interesting in that the cabinet style looked pre-WWII but it runs mostly postwar tubes. Nice and spacious underneath to make recapping easier. Aircastle was Spiegal Catalog Stores House brand. Jobber sets could have been made by any of several factories
Decent sounding with new caps
it would be totally awesome to see a rebuild of the IF cans in regard to the mica caps in the cans
I believe Shango066 has done a video on this for a Zenith console stereo with tubes, and the repair was hard as hell.
I'm restoring an old Sparton Tube radio circa 1946 and ran across something on the schematic that I have never seen before. The last resistor listed says R18 2700 ohms 5. w. w. w.. All the other resistors show the ohm value and watt value as an example R4 100 ohms .5w etc. My question is what does it mean when there are 3 "w" s like that? I went
ahead and replaced the R18 with a 2700 ohm 5 watt resistor. The radio works and I have the proper voltages but the resistor is getting extremely hot. Any thoughts, ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.
Bravo Bravissimo.
Nice vid, but I understand that replacing the electro. cap with multiple non-elctro. caps adding to equivalent capacitance and assuming their voltages match the original electrolytic, is not ideal and could lead to other problems. Also I would test the other tubes for emission, short, and grid leakage.
What amperage should the varivac have for testing? I know going up to 130 V is sufficient for US.
Nice!!
Great video. Well explained. Why did yoou choose not to safe-wire the chassis?
Very nice looking old radio. 1946 ?
nice one - thx
D-Lab, since you have the isolation transformer right there, is there a reason that you choose to not use it sometimes?
Hi Terry. What is the difference between the Beckman tech 360 and the industrial 360? I have the tech and like the 20 ohn scale :-)
With these type, no transformer, what do you do to add a polarized ac cord and make the chassis safe? Always enjoy your videos. Thanks.
I’ve often wondered how much that *untuned* RF stage really helps performance. Probably not much.....but from a sales perspective, six tubes sounds better than five.
Great!
like your t shirt
Please help me...I recapped a Sentinel 294T, replaced tubes with good ones, replaced some suspect resistors...all my tube voltages look good, I get sound on speaker, but no evidence of a 'tuning feeling'... The radio was missing an antenna, so I experimented with a long wire in several configurations with no improvement...the coils in the IF xfmrs tested continuous...idk what's going on but someone obviously tried repairing it...I didn't replace any square caps or all the resistors...any thoughts?? I don't want to assume mica disease and risk destroying radio
Cool video. So, is this radio basically an AA5 with an RF amp stage? And that's why the audio output tube is a 35L6, instead of a 50L6, to free up voltage to power 6 tube filaments off of 120 volts?
you forgot to put the knobs back on when you hooked up to variac ,be carefull !! thanks for video
FM obsoleted AM in the 1970s. Streaming and satellite obsoleted FM in the last decade. Radio is a nearly dead format filled with unbearably long commercial breaks. The last survivor will be NPR. So why repair a 1950s AM radio that can never be tuned to something worth listening to (in mono)? First, there is the challenge of using accumulated knowledge to debug the problems. Then there is finding leftover parts to do the fix and upgrading with retrofit and newer technology. Fixing things can be very satisfying, even if it isn't saving money. The original purpose of the radio, listening to AM, has been superseded by the purpose of being a nice archaic technology home decoration. Which it does well. Mr. D-lab has a presentation style that makes a dry subject fun to watch.
Where did you put the orange drop and why not the panasonics? Need some guidance. Thank you. I really like your vid's! Do you really drink that red stuff when working on radios? Lol.
Had to use the Sprague, since I did not have the Panasonics in a .25uf
I've gotten to the point where not only can I not walk anymore but I can't solder anything from the shaking so anything that I want done I have to send out and I love restoring my old jukeboxes
Do you bother to make sure the foil end of new caps are aligned the same as the originals? I know modern caps don't usually have a foil end marked, but it's not hard to determine which end is which if you have a 'scope handy.
Not unless the cap has the band. These new poly type dont
Thats true (using the scope) and often the bands are wrong anyway Mr Carlsonn did a good clip about this
I can tell you that there are very few instances where doing this makes any difference in real life applications. Certainly not in an old AM radio.
@@johnstone7697 In the spirit of one of the comments before yours, if you do hand wire it make sure you don't leave any stresses on the component leads after you solder them or the molecular alignment of the leads and even the dielectric can be altered which as we all know, changes the sound.................Right?
(who needs emoticons when you can make somebody vomit with mere words?)
Do you ever replace the power chords on these tube radios with a 3 prong ground chord?