I grew up in the 1970's and 80's I have childhood and teen memories of a junked pre-1930's mystery radio that I now recently identified as a Radiola Model 17.18 or 60 chassis in my backyard. It was removed from the original wooden box that was not present probably sat in the bushes since the 1950's the tubes were long gone but I do remember the still attached power supply and the giant triple gang tuning capacitor and the unique looking tuning indicator spool looking exactly like yours. After all these decades I was so thrilled to see a fully working example of a once familiar but totally trashed Radiola.
Might consider checking conditions of the capacitors and the resistors might be out of spec as well. Better to check than have something go bad and fry such a nice set.
As far as the tube situation goes: Back in the 20s and into the early 30s many radios didn't include the tubes which were purchased separately. If you look at old print ads for these radios they would show the price for the set "less Radiotrons" (tubes). It's possible the original owner purchased aftermarket tubes to save money.
Definitely DO NOT try plugging it into the mains with the power cord in that condition, at best you will most likely blow all the house fuses, at worst you might not survive it, I strongly recommend replacing the power cord first, then give it a good electrical check-out before plugging it in.
You might want to look at your own video. Your volume control is not the problem, I pretty sure because when you turned the volume up, your voltage meter went down even more. So it does change things and is probably not bad. If you are still running through the light bulb you are current limiting and as you turned up the volume that voltage went down because you had the voltage and the current limited through the light bulb, but the electronics tried to get more electricity to make it louder but that electricity was not there. Now if you were not still on the light bulb power idea then the power supply in this old radio had a problem, or capacitor leaking bad, but without hum I doubt it was a cap problem. But I am pretty sure you were still on the light bulb resistance setup. PS: not fixing the power cord made for more possible damage, so that was a bad idea, especially once you started moving those wires around.
I Only realized after the video that I had the meter wired incorrectly, the outputs are flipped from my radiola 17 and the schematic didn't show this. Yes in editing I also noticed the voltage changing, The only reason I didn't replace the cord was I wanted to try to power it up without doing anything to it. and even if a capacitor or the cord had shorted it would have just lit the bulb up brighter telling me to turn it off.
Gorgeous radio! That would have cost a lot back in the day!
I grew up in the 1970's and 80's I have childhood and teen memories of a junked pre-1930's mystery radio that I now recently identified as a Radiola Model 17.18 or 60 chassis in my backyard. It was removed from the original wooden box that was not present probably sat in the bushes since the 1950's the tubes were long gone but I do remember the still attached power supply and the giant triple gang tuning capacitor and the unique looking tuning indicator spool looking exactly like yours. After all these decades I was so thrilled to see a fully working example of a once familiar but totally trashed Radiola.
Very nice memories
Smart phone run out after 2...5 years....
1920's radio still run on 2023
Might consider checking conditions of the capacitors and the resistors might be out of spec as well. Better to check than have something go bad and fry such a nice set.
That's a nice project 🤗
As far as the tube situation goes: Back in the 20s and into the early 30s many radios didn't include the tubes which were purchased separately. If you look at old print ads for these radios they would show the price for the set "less Radiotrons" (tubes). It's possible the original owner purchased aftermarket tubes to save money.
Definitely DO NOT try plugging it into the mains with the power cord in that condition, at best you will most likely blow all the house fuses, at worst you might not survive it, I strongly recommend replacing the power cord first, then give it a good electrical check-out before plugging it in.
That would have cost a bit "back in the day" if you had bought it brand-new from the original dealer, would have cost quite a few wages back then.
You might want to look at your own video. Your volume control is not the problem, I pretty sure because when you turned the volume up, your voltage meter went down even more. So it does change things and is probably not bad. If you are still running through the light bulb you are current limiting and as you turned up the volume that voltage went down because you had the voltage and the current limited through the light bulb, but the electronics tried to get more electricity to make it louder but that electricity was not there. Now if you were not still on the light bulb power idea then the power supply in this old radio had a problem, or capacitor leaking bad, but without hum I doubt it was a cap problem. But I am pretty sure you were still on the light bulb resistance setup. PS: not fixing the power cord made for more possible damage, so that was a bad idea, especially once you started moving those wires around.
I Only realized after the video that I had the meter wired incorrectly, the outputs are flipped from my radiola 17 and the schematic didn't show this. Yes in editing I also noticed the voltage changing, The only reason I didn't replace the cord was I wanted to try to power it up without doing anything to it. and even if a capacitor or the cord had shorted it would have just lit the bulb up brighter telling me to turn it off.
Over in canada where greed is the meed, it would have gone for $1,300; not $30.
Because Canadians seem to think Because something is old it's worth a million dollars. I😂