I bet you had no idea you were a teacher. I learned a few things today, one how to calculate the line resistor, and how to figure out the voltage required for the filaments. I've learned several lessons from you and your technique for trouble shooting. Keep these great videos coming, and Thank you :)
Thank you so much for making another long video! I am in California and on lockdown so your videos have been helping me distract myself. I really appreciate everything you do.
GREAT job, you saved another piece of history, all it needs now is the cabinet refinished which will be hard because of the pattern on the front, that would be hard to duplicate.
The easy part is now done and it actually pulls in the signals bad as they are now. The cabinet work is a whole new ball game. It really needs a lot of work. Great resurrection video there Bryan!
Well done! I have a soft spot for those old 4 tube TRF sets. They weren't great performers, but it's about what they represent---built during the Depression, that's all many people could afford, and they were oftentimes their only entertainment
Nice old classic looking radio radio ,Our country is now in lock down New Zealand ,But the main thing is i enjoyed your video and thats all that counts ,Cheers.
Great video! Thanks for taking the time to do this. I know it would have been a lot easier to just fix the radio off camera rather than document the whole process. I am happy to watch you do these repairs.
Hello radiotvphononut, Sounds like your doing good and staying busy, good repair. So far so good here in Oregon. What a way to bring the world to it's knees. Stay safe, all the best, C.
Very timely. I just acquired a Chicago orange label "General" brand unknown model # trf radio, with the same 4 tubes, chokes and lamps. Just the stub left of the original burner cord on mine. I haven't really finally decided what to do about that, but this gives me some ideas. It looks like the schematic of mine, a sticker on the bottom of the cabinet, is the same. There appears to have been a back on mine, that is missing.
You can get some fairly small heat sinks (or just cut a larger one down) to try to keep that resistor cool. You might also want to put a little bit of heat sink compound on the part of the resistor that is mounted to the chassis.
Cool, you know when I see something like that old set come to life, I think back to the time when it was new. For example, mom would have been a young girl at the time, I guess about 7 or 8 years old. She had a house full of brothers and sisters, Granma and Grandpa were some wonderful folks, they took very good care of the farm where they lived and their livestock. Grandpa still used horses back then, but that house did get power when the REA brought it in, so they could well have got something like that, however I think where they lived a farm radio would have been more in order. Grandpa was a German, he came over just before WWI. He once told me he saw the clouds of war over Germany, and where he lived had just been taken over by Germany, it had been a part of one of the low countries, he was drafted into the German Army and assigned to the Stables since in civilian life his father ran a very prosperous stable in their home city. So it was, according to him, he stole the fastest horse in the Kaiser's Stable and rode it to Denmark, where he booked passage, using funds sent to him by a cousin in the USA, for both he and the horse, as his cousin told him it would be expensive to book passage on a train out to North Dakota. When the ship arrived in the US, he processed through Ellis Island, and picked up his horse from the cargo area, he saddled up and began his long ride from New York to North Dakota. He rode that horse all the way, it must have taken him months, and I can only imagine the adventures he had on the way. Once he got to North Dakota, he found his cousin's farm and worked on the farm for his Cousin for 4 years to repay him for the money he had borrowed to come over. When he had his debt paid he stayed on till he had saved enough up to put a down payment (which it sounds like was full payment back then) on a small farmstead, he stayed there till he was able to get more land then having found the love of his live in a wheat field (long romantic story that could bring tears to all eyes, should I reveal this ever so long story of murder, assault and escape) they settled on land they purchased from the Rail Road, it was deeded land that the RR was awarded on some government deal and was located on the edge of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. So it is when I see that old radio, all of this comes to mind, all the young children laying on the floor as Grandma bakes apples for their treat, and Grandfather tunes his radio to the station that is playing their favorite radio drama's. Thanks for the memories sir, your radios coming back to life have a wonderful effecnt on an old fart. Oh mom is still alive and kicking although she did have to go into a nursing home after 2 heart attacks and congestive heart failure hit her over Christmas. She will be 95 next month and is once more up and about in the home playing cards and loving life, getting around with her walker and calling me daily with reports on her luck at cards, and the great food they prepare for the residents at this home.
Great job! You squeezed the best out of that cheap radio!!! Seems like the selectivity improved when you started using all of the antenna coil..lol...I have a 4 tube TRF Marshal model unknown...in waiting to be worked on....still trying to find a schematic...found one close...on ARF...maybe one day I will get around to it! Enjoyed the video and thanks for sharing it! Take Care--Larry
I think you are right about Ebay. I recently sold off some old Macintosh (Orange) Windows cards. I was happy enough with the results, also sold off a rare video card, the lot got me about 400 total, less, of course fees. Well I spent that off rather quickly and decided to put up another lot to complete my clean-out, but when I looked at recent sales and considered the situation, I believe my special pocket computer collection will stay mine until the China Virus has worked it's way though the population and folks are once again looking for that special item. Love the looks of that Radio, it would look so nice with some new veneer on the case and a bit of cleaning up. I think I will make a small version of that case when I can get out in my wood shop again (still snow blocking the door) for the internet radio system that I am building using an ESP32, an MP3 decoder and an amplifier that I built out of a kit. I will power it with a small power supply that I also built from scratch. I like the fact that my MP3 converter has a TF slot so I can add some old 40's and 50's hits as well as some music from that era so when mom comes to visit on leave from the nursing home, I can put on some tunes she enjoys.
All of the good music AM stations are up here. Just this year alone, more existing stations that had talk-oriented formats are now music. Granted, some of that was because of translators, but we already had many music formatted AMs here. Other than WSM, the other big one is WHIN and it plays pop music with new studios, a new AM transmitter and it makes money to boot.
Another way to solve the filament voltage issue is to replace the output tube with a 6.3v version, and the rectifier with a diode, then run the heaters off of a 6.3v filament transformer. Could also replace the two 6.3v tubes with 12.6 volt ones, and wire them in series, put those in parallel with the other two tubes and find a 25 volt filament transformer.
Here we are on Lock down the sites are only doing essential stuff now hopefully things soon get back to normal thats some nice stuff u got there ,and thats a good Radio for some one who might wanna listen to Local stations since it does play and easy for Older people to use with simpler buttons and not alot of switches just on and off and tuning Volume all thats needed might need wait till states that are on lock down are out of that and life returns to normal and people can buy again. just stay safe out there.
Well done Sir!They could have improved the selectivity and sensitivity by using Regeneration or Reaction as it was sometimes called.You would have had two knobs to twiddle when tuning in then though and maybe that would have put off potential buyers.
An alternative to using high power resistors to drop the 55v-60v from the mains, get a hold of a 100w 60v stepdown transformer. Wire it like a buck boost transformer, but use it to shave off 60v from the 120v mains. There you get the reduction and not a lot of wasteful heat you have to deal with if you used ceramic resistors. Watch it because running a transformer like that your not isolated from them mains anymore.
Wen I Was A Teenager Back Around The Earley 80's All I Had Was A Sound Design Boombox & I Picked Up WSM All The Way From Minnesota Where I Live. Hell I Listened To The Opry Every Weekend. & That's Alll The Entertainment I Had Cause We Couldnt Aford Cable Tv. Now That I Dont Have Cable TV I Dont Care Cause All It Is Is Another Bill I Dont Need. Cause We Have Digital TV Now. So That Means I Can Get More Channels Without The Need For Cable Tv.
Be careful radio tv phono nut , there is scammer in your comment section. What is oldest radio you ever had? About 40 years i was cleaning out my grandmother's basement i found a spark gap station both reciever and transmitter and some very large transformers. I scraped most it not including reciever key and transmitter key. There's no way any power could be put to those transformers without a spectacular light show.
Definitely *not* a superheterodyne! During the Depression, manufacturers had to skimp on materials and cut other corners to make their products profitable.
I really don't know why they would design something like this. The cost of a kw hour in 1933 was over 6.5 cents! That 6.5 cents is the lowest rate for the first 25kw/h and unadjusted. It was 6.5 literal 1933 cents, which is many times today's electricity prices! I am paying like 15 cents in 2020 dollars for a kw/h. Aside from the higher cost of running it and the national cost of many thousands of these things existing, especially at a time when people listened to radios A LOT, there is a safety factor. These things caused a lot of house fires. Then there's the summer factor. You turn on the radio, which already dumps like 25-40 watts of heat and now you are dumping all this extra heat. It's not like they didn't know. They knew this was going to cause a lot more heat, that's one of the reasons it's in the line cord. They had to understand that all that heat was going to damage the insulation on the cord. As much as I generally don't like regulation, it is companies like this that make it necessary. All to save probably less than $2!
I disagree! They went with what they had back then, for this design and its lack of safety merits lowered the unit cost for the buyer. Made a lot of since in the Depression Era and WW2 period, from 1930 to 1945.
Couldn't disagree more. They were just different times.. electricity may have been more expensive but unlike the electric guzzling America of today most houses had lights and a radio, no central air, big entertainment system, tvs, fridges, washing machines were often hand operated, even gasoline washers back then. Running water was a luxury in many houses. Grandparents used one well into the 70s, so long as you were careful with it then there were no problems, just like pretty much everything else at the time, open coal or wood fires, coal in pans to heat beds in winter, gas lights in some places. What the design did do was bring radio to the masses in a time when money was scarce. Previous sets were either battery only, which were expensive or some people used lead acid... think of all the lead acid and environment / health or expensive transformer AC only based when a lot of folk still had DC. The line cords did come with warnings not to bundle them up or run em under carpets. If you look up antique fire records ive not found any specifically attributed to line cord fires. What giving the masses cheap available radio did do though was move the industry forward, with a demand for radio there were more stations, advertising revenue, desire to create better sets at affordable prices, if it weren't for sets like these then the onset of radio would have been delayed by a long time.
People in general tend to shop on price point, not speifications. Easier to advertise a cheaper radio than a significantly more expensive one that happens to be more efficient and safe. It's also my understanding a TRF this late in the game would strictly be built to a minimum price point.
27:00 If they weren't depressing you enough with this coronavirus hysteria yap and the economy harming way our dysfunctional political system is handing it, on the radio, they are depressing you about having to put your dog down when it comes time to say goodbye on the radio.
Remove all guts from recrod players. Install fake glass (acrylic) window to view fake non-operational 12ax7 which is light by a blue LED. Lift the lid to expose mini bar cart items. That's all the lookers and watchers are looking for. They're all idiots, pretentious, often gay, 'nuevo-gay', have more money than you or I could count, and they live in Seattle, San Fran, and Portland. They line the front row of seats, the window seats, in the vegan coffee shops... laptop lids all aglow with Apple logos... and it's FREAKY. I've seen it. I lived there for employment before coming home to Mich. I realized... it's a modern-day human mating technique. It's evolved in such cities without humans even realizing it! Kinda like chimps beating on their chests. That's how young people do it these days I guess. With glowing Apple logos. Good luck
@@samsonite7694 If what someone is saying doesn't apply to you, then they OBVIOUSLY are NOT talking about YOU. You need to check your identity. Being gay is not an identity. Don't make it one. If doesn't apply, let it fly.
I bet you had no idea you were a teacher. I learned a few things today, one how to calculate the line resistor, and how to figure out the voltage required for the filaments. I've learned several lessons from you and your technique for trouble shooting. Keep these great videos coming, and Thank you :)
Thank you so much for making another long video! I am in California and on lockdown so your videos have been helping me distract myself. I really appreciate everything you do.
why, don't be deceived.
GREAT job, you saved another piece of history, all it needs now is the cabinet refinished which will be hard because of the pattern on the front, that would be hard to duplicate.
I enjoy your longer videos a lot. Thank you.
The easy part is now done and it actually pulls in the signals bad as they are now. The cabinet work is a whole new
ball game. It really needs a lot of work. Great resurrection video there Bryan!
The year my late mom was born. Great and interesting video!
I was just thinking the same thing about my mom.
She passed in 2019...
Well done! I have a soft spot for those old 4 tube TRF sets. They weren't great performers, but it's about what they represent---built during the Depression, that's all many people could afford, and they were oftentimes their only entertainment
Nice old classic looking radio radio ,Our country is now in lock down New Zealand ,But the main thing is i enjoyed your video and thats all that counts ,Cheers.
Great video! Thanks for taking the time to do this. I know it would have been a lot easier to just fix the radio off camera rather than document the whole process. I am happy to watch you do these repairs.
Hello radiotvphononut, Sounds like your doing good and staying busy, good repair. So far so good here in Oregon. What a way to bring the world to it's knees. Stay safe, all the best, C.
Nice little radio i like they dial 👍
Very timely. I just acquired a Chicago orange label "General" brand unknown model # trf radio, with the same 4 tubes, chokes and lamps. Just the stub left of the original burner cord on mine. I haven't really finally decided what to do about that, but this gives me some ideas. It looks like the schematic of mine, a sticker on the bottom of the cabinet, is the same. There appears to have been a back on mine, that is missing.
You can get some fairly small heat sinks (or just cut a larger one down) to try to keep that resistor cool. You might also want to put a little bit of heat sink compound on the part of the resistor that is mounted to the chassis.
Thanks for posting your video I always learned something from you
Gotta love those "curtain burner" radios! Plays pretty good for what it is.
Cool, you know when I see something like that old set come to life, I think back to the time when it was new. For example, mom would have been a young girl at the time, I guess about 7 or 8 years old. She had a house full of brothers and sisters, Granma and Grandpa were some wonderful folks, they took very good care of the farm where they lived and their livestock. Grandpa still used horses back then, but that house did get power when the REA brought it in, so they could well have got something like that, however I think where they lived a farm radio would have been more in order. Grandpa was a German, he came over just before WWI. He once told me he saw the clouds of war over Germany, and where he lived had just been taken over by Germany, it had been a part of one of the low countries, he was drafted into the German Army and assigned to the Stables since in civilian life his father ran a very prosperous stable in their home city. So it was, according to him, he stole the fastest horse in the Kaiser's Stable and rode it to Denmark, where he booked passage, using funds sent to him by a cousin in the USA, for both he and the horse, as his cousin told him it would be expensive to book passage on a train out to North Dakota. When the ship arrived in the US, he processed through Ellis Island, and picked up his horse from the cargo area, he saddled up and began his long ride from New York to North Dakota. He rode that horse all the way, it must have taken him months, and I can only imagine the adventures he had on the way. Once he got to North Dakota, he found his cousin's farm and worked on the farm for his Cousin for 4 years to repay him for the money he had borrowed to come over. When he had his debt paid he stayed on till he had saved enough up to put a down payment (which it sounds like was full payment back then) on a small farmstead, he stayed there till he was able to get more land then having found the love of his live in a wheat field (long romantic story that could bring tears to all eyes, should I reveal this ever so long story of murder, assault and escape) they settled on land they purchased from the Rail Road, it was deeded land that the RR was awarded on some government deal and was located on the edge of the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. So it is when I see that old radio, all of this comes to mind, all the young children laying on the floor as Grandma bakes apples for their treat, and Grandfather tunes his radio to the station that is playing their favorite radio drama's. Thanks for the memories sir, your radios coming back to life have a wonderful effecnt on an old fart. Oh mom is still alive and kicking although she did have to go into a nursing home after 2 heart attacks and congestive heart failure hit her over Christmas. She will be 95 next month and is once more up and about in the home playing cards and loving life, getting around with her walker and calling me daily with reports on her luck at cards, and the great food they prepare for the residents at this home.
Great job! You squeezed the best out of that cheap radio!!! Seems like the selectivity improved when you started using all of the antenna coil..lol...I have a 4 tube TRF Marshal model unknown...in waiting to be worked on....still trying to find a schematic...found one close...on ARF...maybe one day I will get around to it! Enjoyed the video and thanks for sharing it! Take Care--Larry
I am watching these videos just to see the old radios.
Nice little radio. Even though it might have been cheap still better than a modern crosley!
You're part of the "Hate Crosley Too" movement as well :-(
You got there in the end, well done and I learned a bit about ohms law as well so thank you.
I have an ohms law calculator app on my phone.Its very handy to have.I used it yesterday for my car audio installation.
Great resurrection. Good video.
0:59 wow. Quite a sight looking inside there
Really nice Radio!
I think you are right about Ebay. I recently sold off some old Macintosh (Orange) Windows cards. I was happy enough with the results, also sold off a rare video card, the lot got me about 400 total, less, of course fees. Well I spent that off rather quickly and decided to put up another lot to complete my clean-out, but when I looked at recent sales and considered the situation, I believe my special pocket computer collection will stay mine until the China Virus has worked it's way though the population and folks are once again looking for that special item. Love the looks of that Radio, it would look so nice with some new veneer on the case and a bit of cleaning up. I think I will make a small version of that case when I can get out in my wood shop again (still snow blocking the door) for the internet radio system that I am building using an ESP32, an MP3 decoder and an amplifier that I built out of a kit. I will power it with a small power supply that I also built from scratch. I like the fact that my MP3 converter has a TF slot so I can add some old 40's and 50's hits as well as some music from that era so when mom comes to visit on leave from the nursing home, I can put on some tunes she enjoys.
All of the good music AM stations are up here. Just this year alone, more existing stations that had talk-oriented formats are now music. Granted, some of that was because of translators, but we already had many music formatted AMs here. Other than WSM, the other big one is WHIN and it plays pop music with new studios, a new AM transmitter and it makes money to boot.
The schematic has the external antenna connection crkt like in a 4-tuber superhet from the late 40's
Classic at 29:45 what was that? Robo-twerkulating?
Another way to solve the filament voltage issue is to replace the output tube with a 6.3v version, and the rectifier with a diode, then run the heaters off of a 6.3v filament transformer.
Could also replace the two 6.3v tubes with 12.6 volt ones, and wire them in series, put those in parallel with the other two tubes and find a 25 volt filament transformer.
Here we are on Lock down the sites are only doing essential stuff now hopefully things soon get back to normal thats some nice stuff u got there ,and thats a good Radio for some one who might wanna listen to Local stations since it does play and easy for Older people to use with simpler buttons and not alot of switches just on and off and tuning Volume all thats needed might need wait till states that are on lock down are out of that and life returns to normal and people can buy again. just stay safe out there.
A Radio like this probably started the Maui wildfire
Well done Sir!They could have improved the selectivity and sensitivity by using Regeneration or Reaction as it was sometimes called.You would have had two knobs to twiddle when tuning in then though and maybe that would have put off potential buyers.
Some TRF sets can actually be quite good sounding.
An alternative to using high power resistors to drop the 55v-60v from the mains, get a hold of a 100w 60v stepdown transformer.
Wire it like a buck boost transformer, but use it to shave off 60v from the 120v mains.
There you get the reduction and not a lot of wasteful heat you have to deal with if you used ceramic resistors. Watch it because running a transformer like that your not isolated from them mains anymore.
Is it just me or does everybody Like the glow of that old dial that old yellow glow
Hello Thank You
you could sell or give it to someone local
I like that radio, if you did put it on ebay, I might be interested.
Do u know what user name he sells under on ebay? I wouldn't hesitate to purchase an item that he repaired and had for sale.
Wen I Was A Teenager Back Around
The Earley 80's All I Had Was A
Sound Design Boombox & I Picked
Up WSM All The Way From
Minnesota Where I Live.
Hell I Listened To The Opry
Every Weekend. & That's Alll
The Entertainment I Had
Cause We Couldnt Aford Cable Tv.
Now That I Dont Have Cable TV
I Dont Care Cause All It Is
Is Another Bill I Dont Need.
Cause We Have Digital TV Now.
So That Means I Can Get More
Channels Without The Need For
Cable Tv.
God I love travlers
Would an LED shop light give off less interference than the fluorescent?
Not necessarily.
without an isolation transformer, [another way round the dropper resistor] wouldnt the external speaker/headphone jack be hot?
Not if the radio has an audio output transformer- and there's no connection to the chassis.
Be careful radio tv phono nut , there is scammer in your comment section. What is oldest radio you ever had? About 40 years i was cleaning out my grandmother's basement i found a spark gap station both reciever and transmitter and some very large transformers. I scraped most it not including reciever key and transmitter key. There's no way any power could be put to those transformers without a spectacular light show.
I would love to buy this something about this radio,that I like
Dammit I was tricked this isn't toilet paper.‘︿’
Definitely *not* a superheterodyne! During the Depression, manufacturers had to skimp on materials and cut other corners to make their products profitable.
Plus you needed a license from RCA to build superhet radios to sell.
I really don't know why they would design something like this. The cost of a kw hour in 1933 was over 6.5 cents! That 6.5 cents is the lowest rate for the first 25kw/h and unadjusted. It was 6.5 literal 1933 cents, which is many times today's electricity prices! I am paying like 15 cents in 2020 dollars for a kw/h.
Aside from the higher cost of running it and the national cost of many thousands of these things existing, especially at a time when people listened to radios A LOT, there is a safety factor. These things caused a lot of house fires.
Then there's the summer factor. You turn on the radio, which already dumps like 25-40 watts of heat and now you are dumping all this extra heat. It's not like they didn't know. They knew this was going to cause a lot more heat, that's one of the reasons it's in the line cord. They had to understand that all that heat was going to damage the insulation on the cord.
As much as I generally don't like regulation, it is companies like this that make it necessary. All to save probably less than $2!
I disagree! They went with what they had back then, for this design and its lack of safety merits lowered the unit cost for the buyer. Made a lot of since in the Depression Era and WW2 period, from 1930 to 1945.
Couldn't disagree more. They were just different times.. electricity may have been more expensive but unlike the electric guzzling America of today most houses had lights and a radio, no central air, big entertainment system, tvs, fridges, washing machines were often hand operated, even gasoline washers back then. Running water was a luxury in many houses. Grandparents used one well into the 70s, so long as you were careful with it then there were no problems, just like pretty much everything else at the time, open coal or wood fires, coal in pans to heat beds in winter, gas lights in some places. What the design did do was bring radio to the masses in a time when money was scarce. Previous sets were either battery only, which were expensive or some people used lead acid... think of all the lead acid and environment / health or expensive transformer AC only based when a lot of folk still had DC. The line cords did come with warnings not to bundle them up or run em under carpets. If you look up antique fire records ive not found any specifically attributed to line cord fires. What giving the masses cheap available radio did do though was move the industry forward, with a demand for radio there were more stations, advertising revenue, desire to create better sets at affordable prices, if it weren't for sets like these then the onset of radio would have been delayed by a long time.
People in general tend to shop on price point, not speifications. Easier to advertise a cheaper radio than a significantly more expensive one that happens to be more efficient and safe. It's also my understanding a TRF this late in the game would strictly be built to a minimum price point.
27:00 If they weren't depressing you enough with this coronavirus hysteria yap and the economy harming way our dysfunctional political system is handing it, on the radio, they are depressing you about having to put your dog down when it comes time to say goodbye on the radio.
Remove all guts from recrod players. Install fake glass (acrylic) window to view fake non-operational 12ax7 which is light by a blue LED. Lift the lid to expose mini bar cart items. That's all the lookers and watchers are looking for. They're all idiots, pretentious, often gay, 'nuevo-gay', have more money than you or I could count, and they live in Seattle, San Fran, and Portland. They line the front row of seats, the window seats, in the vegan coffee shops... laptop lids all aglow with Apple logos... and it's FREAKY. I've seen it. I lived there for employment before coming home to Mich. I realized... it's a modern-day human mating technique. It's evolved in such cities without humans even realizing it! Kinda like chimps beating on their chests. That's how young people do it these days I guess. With glowing Apple logos. Good luck
@@samsonite7694 If what someone is saying doesn't apply to you, then they OBVIOUSLY are NOT talking about YOU. You need to check your identity. Being gay is not an identity. Don't make it one. If doesn't apply, let it fly.
Great video thanks
1st