(Topic ID: 302065)

Any radio repairmen here?

By cottonm4

2 years ago


Topic Heartbeat

Topic Stats

  • 21 posts
  • 12 Pinsiders participating
  • Latest reply 2 years ago by mbwalker
  • Topic is favorited by 1 Pinsider

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    Ted Weber WX5 Copper Cap drawing (resized).jpg
    tube 6U5 wires bad (resized).jpg
    chassis on bench top 1 (resized).jpg
    after 2 (resized).jpg
    Zenith 8S463 orig front 1 (resized).jpg

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    #1 2 years ago

    I have a radio that was my mom's. It worked when I put it in the attic 30 years ago. Too many years in the attic heat has cauded something to go bad.

    I would like to fix this and start using it again.

    Can anybody tell me where to look to fix the sound? I know nothing about troubleshooting radios. I have not opened it up and looked at the insides yet.

    Thanks in advance.

    #6 2 years ago
    Quoted from JethroP:

    Replace all the electrolytic capacitors. Send to me....I will fix it if you want.

    That's a nice offer, Jethro.

    If I am not successful with this approach I may take you up on it.

    #9 2 years ago

    I appreciate all the answers. But it sounds like this would be jumping on the money train for me. I have found a cheap Am-Fm countertop radio on Amazon for $12.00 with free shipping. I am going to go that route.

    If anybody who fixes radios would like to have this one for the price of shipping I can make that happen. To me, it is just an old cheap Silvertone. But I don't want to throw it away.

    Send me a PM.

    First come. First served.

    #11 2 years ago
    Quoted from Thermionic:

    First, please be VERY careful working on this - those radios were not in any way, shape, or form built with any considerations regarding electrical shock or fire safety, and would not come remotely close to passing any modern electrical standards. They are very cool to own and fire up once and a while, and very easy to work on, but you have to always respect the fact that they are inherently unsafe electrical designs.
    This applies regardless of whether it is a tube or early solid-state design. These radios were built by the millions as cheaply as possible, and one of the biggest cost-cutting things they did was to eliminate the power transformer. The tube radios had the so-called "All American Five" tube compliment; they were designed to operate at lower plate voltages that were derived by directly rectifying the AC line, and the heater voltages add up to 117v when connected in series, so no multi-section power transformer was "necessary". Many similarly cheap transistor radios of the period also eschewed power transformers and simply used high-wattage power resistors to drop the voltage (my grandmother had an "Arvin" branded one from the early 60s that ran about as hot as a tube set solely due to the resistor!)
    The lack of power transformer is dangerous in its own right because there's no isolation from the AC line; in these radios though, the danger is significantly compounded by the fact that one leg of the AC is tied to the chassis AND there is no polarized or grounded power plug, therefore each time you plug one in you have a 50% chance that the chassis (and every metal part attached to it) will be energized directly by the "hot" AC leg. The only real concession to "electrical safety" was the use of plastics and other insulating materials for the controls and other stuff that could be touched by the user (yes, you can get electrocuted by touching a bare volume control shaft)!
    I would not under any circumstances work on one of these "live" until I at a minimum modified it with a polarized plug (even then, no guarantees if the outlet is wired wrong) AND plugged it into an isolation transformer! Additionally, I would not operate the radio or even leave it plugged in unattended.
    Now to (finally) answer the question, it sounds like the issue is almost certainly a bad electrolytic filter capacitor, especially given the conditions the radio was stored in (fortunately, it's unlikely that anything else significantly deteriorated except possibly the speaker cone). These caps were generally multi-section (usually 3 sections, often with two of them connected in parallel), and exact replacements are still available; if you can't find an exact replacement, you can connect two or three discrete parts (modern replacements are smaller than the old ones). The rest of the caps in that radio will be either paper in oil, beeswax, or possibly film, and probably don't need replacement if the radio otherwise works.

    I just bought the cheapie from Amazon. I may try to repair this one one day to learn some new skills and live in some nostalgia ( appreciate the hazards shout out). But my offer stands. Free to anyone who pays for shipping.

    #14 2 years ago
    Quoted from xsvtoys:

    Saving this thread, I am glad to see (and not surprised) there are knowledgeable pinsiders on this topic. I have also been able to get some good help from antiqueradios.com forums. I did a ton of reading about these old radios, there is lots of good information on the internet if you can find it.
    I'm going to be working on this one sometime I hope, right now it is put away as I am working on a house remodeling project. When that is done I hope to get this on the workbench and replace the crumbling rubber wires, figure out what work has been done before (I think there was some), and replace caps as necessary. Everything is working on it except the green eye tube, which I suspect might be due to bad wiring.
    As I got it originally (from the niece of the original owner, someone spilled something on it over the years).
    [quoted image]
    I had a wood guy I know attempt to fix up the finish, and I think he did a pretty good job. I need to replicate the front of that decal that runs along the top edge that he removed, I think those are available somewhere.
    [quoted image]
    Chassis pulled and ready for work
    [quoted image]
    Typical bad wires, these are on the 6U5 green eye tube.
    [quoted image]
    I replaced the rectifier tube 6X5 (kept the original) with one of these solid state WX5 for safety purposes, as I read the 6X5 tubes can possibly fail with flames and smoke and such:[quoted image]

    It cleaned up nice for a nice looking piece of furniture. I love Art Deco items.

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