[mrvanwinkles]

Old Radios, Classic Radios, Radio Restoration

Old or Older Radios, Really old radios, Classic Radios, Old tube radios.

They don't have to be ancient, like the 1920's or 30's, but like maybe even the 60's or 70's too.

Pictures, model numbers, schematics, features, history, trivia, information etc.

Story of how you got the radio, what you use it for, where you have it and how it's hooked up, how it sounds, what you find neat about it.

Just for general hobby discussion and sharing of radio hardware etc.

For Fun and sharing of old, older, classic, ancient radio hobby and collection.

 

[mrvanwinkles]

Granada model R-218 W (?)

So I salvaged a Granada Radio that looks very similar to this one, which someone posted pictures of on a buy and sell website.

Based on the sticker in the picture, this is a Granada model R-218 W

 

[chazz]

Hey MrVan.. I'll be first to input something .not ancient ..but of the early 60's vintage.
It's a Made in Germany .. Blaupunkt Riviera Model 2540. I purchased it second hand in 1960 and still use it.It works well except for the FM section. I'm not an electronics person but managed to find a schematic on line for it to do a small repair. A capacitor shorted and took out a resister and the AM Band went dead. I managed to find the problem with the help of a neighbour. AM works but I've not found the FM problem. Maybe nest time the AM Band goes I'll take it to the basement again. I also have a SABA Model 3000 Consul ..it really sounds good on FM. Those old radios are great.

 

[mrvanwinkles]

Granada 4-Speaker AM/FM Solid-State model ? year ?

Now here are pictures that I have taken of the actual radio that I have found / salvaged.

Granada 4-Speaker AM/FM Solid-State

Granada model ? - I don't know / am trying to find out.

There is no indication anywhere on the radio or inside, or on the circuit board itself, or on the schematic sticker on bottom, of the model number.
No where.

Perhaps the previous owner removed a sticker from the radio back indicating that.

I have no idea of possible year of manufacture either.

There is a small Canadian CSA, Canadian Standards Association, safety approval sticker left on the back.
Can hardly read it.

Looks like:

CSA Testing Laboratories
Approved
Power Operated Radio
LL 21519 S 9

( this is a CSA safety approvals file number, in theory, and might be able to find some info from that.)

 

[mrvanwinkles]

more pictures, mystery Granada radio. model ? year ?

... more pictures of my salvaged / found Granada radio ( forum allows 4 pictures max per post )

[ Looking at the schematic sticker on the bottom, looks like it has 8 transistors and 6 diodes. ]

I have carefully steamed and removed the schematic sticker on the bottom, and scanned it best I could,
but that file is pretty large and cannot be posted to the forum - I do not think.

The schematic scan came out not bad at say 600 dpi or 1200 dpi and medium or high sharpness enhanced.
Also ... steaming it sort of diluted / washed away the brown stain and made it all light brown - small sticker, but scan is readable.

I feel like I'm into some sort of "Radio ART / History PRESERVATION" or something.

 

[mrvanwinkles]

chazz - great! I bet there will be lots of neat old radios and info posted here soon.

MajorTom seems to be quite into it too - I'm sure we'll hear from him soon too.

cheers.

 

[majortom]

mrvanwinkles,
First thing I would do is replace the Electrolytic cap in the large aluminum can, to the right in pic #3 of post # 6. Even if it's not bad now, Gotta believe it's ~ 40+ years old by now and will fail sooner or later
Post the scanned schematic as a public link via your dropbox or google docs account. If ya don't have a dropbox account, I'll send ya an invite, and we'll both get some extra free cloud space If ur interested send me a pm with your email address.

BTW, I currently have 9.25 GB of dropbox cloud space which is plenty.

Ditto for Chazz, see if ya can post your schematic, maybe we can help ya chase down the fm problem?
Just need to be cautious of copyrighted material. Far as I know anything published prior to 1 Apr 1963 should be fair game (public domain by now).

If a SAMs photofact or sumthing post 1963, ya can send me a link via PM instead.
(ie SAMs would have renewed their post 1963 copyrights since they are still in business today)

 

[majortom]

1949 FADA 790 (Series B) AM/FM receiver. Has a Phono input in the rear. From what I have heard, the earliest FM receivers didn't perform very well. This is one of the first sold that actually performed pretty well. Picked up along with two other radios from a local "antique shop", more like a junk store in the hood...
Below PIC is the before...the FADA is the cruddy looking white Plaskon case on the right. The pic doesn't do justice for how bad it really was when I found it.

After I was finished restoring the chassis, made my own plastic dial cover.
Here is what it looks like now.

I use it in the basement with an old vintage set of rabbit ears for an antenna. Rembrandt bakelite style...
It's kinda strange operating, as the on/off switch is ganged with the TONE control, not the volume, which takes some getting used to.
From left to right controls are ON/Off/Tone, Volume, Tuning, Band switch for AM/FM/Phono.

BTW, the old 78 Phono ya see in the rear, I actually fixed up for the antique shop owner and gave back to him in working condition, pro bono. He couldn't believe it actually worked, LOL.
He was an older guy, probably in his late 60s early 70s.
Once I gave it back to him, the following week I saw him posting it for sale on Craigslist. I hope he was able to get something for it. Made me feel good about doing something for the guy anyway.

 

[Gentleman]

I have an antique Stromberg Carlson AM/FM cabinet radio (manufactured in Toronto) that I inherited from my parents. It used to have a turntable in the drawer adjacent to the tuner, but that has since been removed. It needs a little TLC but in it's prime, the sound emanating from the large speaker was impressive.

I'll post up some pictures shortly.

 

[classicsat]

Some pre-1980 radios I know I have:

An old early 1960s radio, I believe made in Germany, branded "Sudfunk" It is MW, SW, and FM, with controls an dials on top, with a handle. It has DIN jacks for power in and for audio in/out. It runs off of 6 C-cells.

One of those AM/FM/PB portable radios, not sure of the brand, but made in Hong Kong or where cheap electronics were made in the 1970s. AC or I think a 4 or 6 AA pack (lost)

One branded Viking, which is AM, FM,SW, and cassette, made someplace in Asia, in the early 1970s or late 1960s. 4 D cells or AC.

One Branded Longines Symphonette. AM/FM/SW, has coarse and fine tune planetary tuning control. 4 C cells or generic wall-wart. Made middle 1960s

That Realistic table radio MrVanwinke has (MTA-15). AC power only, dial and control upside down. Made in later 1970s, or early 1980s, and not "cheap". It uses a power transformer (which I replaced once, the original took a lighnting hit), so is safe to add an audio in which I did. Many 60s/70s era tabletop radios were direct line powered solid state(I had one of those, and it took a beating, and found similar one and restored it).

Honorable mention is a Panasonic tabletop radio. It is AM/FM/WB. That may be early 1980s. WB is tuned be a knob on the back.

I at one time had an late 1950s Motorola AA5T radio, which was on a double sided PCB. Despite being AM only, I really liked that one.

I will add I believe mrvanwinkles radio is likely one of those generic Hong Kong manufactured radios, made in the millions, branded for who is importing it, much the same way cheap LCD TVs and DVD players are today.

 

[majortom]

Found this basket case Zenith C730 AM/FM (late 1950s) for 20 bux (actually $5 but $15 to ship it here, lol). If ya look closely, you'll see the CD marks on the dial indicating the Civil Defense Frequencies which was mandatory here in the US back then.
It was missing a power cord, a 19T8 FM Discriminator tube, and a 12BA6 IF Amplifier Tube. Cut up a dollar store extension cord, and had the missing tubes on hand in the junk box of old tubes.
here is what it looked like this AM when I got it, with paint splatter all over.

And here is what it looks like now after getting it working and cleaning it up with GOJO
cream hand cleaner (non-abrasive kind), available at your favorite auto parts store.

 

[Obed]

Beautiful, thanks for sharing Major Tom.

I few weeks back I bought my son one of the few remaining pocket am/fm transistor radios marketed today so that he could listen to am sports radio when out and about. It also got me thinking again nostalgically about the beautiful radios that were produced in the post war years before the tranny even came along.

I don't have space for one, and the shipping charges would be astronomical but I would really love a beautiful piece of furniture of an old gramophone player. Preferably for me one marked with Hilversum, Monte Carlo, Droitwich, Kalundborg, Beromunster etc that were already old when I was a kid. Long wave would be good to have - just for the station markings - even though it would be useless over here. I guess there may be a few dotted around here from some families that migrated from Europe in the 50's and 60's. I would settle for just seeing one so that I could show it to my son. If anyone has one, please post pictures.

 

[majortom]

Hi Obed,
Try looking them up at radiomuseum.org. It's a great resource.
if you spot one that your remember, and are looking for, post a link to it and we'll keep an eye out for ya. You'd be surprised..bound to be one floating around out there somewhere.

http://www.radiomuseum.org/

 

[chazz]

Majortom.. Re your post #7 in thread, I did become a member of radiomuseum.org, and got a schematic from them for my Blaupunkt Riviera Model 2540. I had to print it out onto a bunch of pages and tape them together to make it large enough to follow the circuits. I don't know a lot about radio theory but am able to follow the schematic as far as finding the physical components but have little idea of what the various circuits do. I was able to fix the AM problem..but more by good dumb luck than skill.I did look into this site (http://www.antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=156620) and posted a few times about my radio. I do enjoy looking at old radios, wish I knew more theory.
I got a chuckle out of your comment above about fixing that 78 phono for that older guy.. he's a bit younger than me ..LOL

 

[majortom]

Chazz,
yup that is definitely the place to look for help..perouse there all the time.
Nice find on the shorted cap, open resistor...
have you hooked up an external FM Antenna? I'm sure your aware these old radios really need one in order to work right. Not being familiar with European radios/tubes, one thing to investigate would be is if there is a tube in the front end that serves both bands? Like a converter tube.
Do you have a tube tester?

As an example in that Fada I posted about earlier, initially it played fine on AM but had no FM. Eventually I found two problems with it that were impacting FM operation.
One was the 12BE6 tube which is used as Both an AM and FM converter, quite often won't work on FM when they age, but will work fine on AM and might even test marginal in a tube tester. That 12BE6 tube just wasn't really designed for frequencies in the FM BC band, but that's what they had available at the time the earliest FM receivers were designed.
I also found a coil in the FM frontend circuit on the Gang Tuning Capacitor that wasn't soldered.
I'll keep studying your schematic..(doesn't help that it's German..LOL)

another thing is to gather up the tube data sheets for all the tubes in your set.
That may help you break it down to like a block diagram, so ya know where NOT to look.

Edit: I hope this helps ya dissect your schematic to a sort of block diagram to better understand
what's going on in each circuit. Each link has a nice description of each tube and what it was designed for, along with a datasheet. The datasheet can be useful when the operating voltages either aren't given, or aren't legible on the schematic / service info.

ECC85 - RF amp / FM oscillator / Mixer
http://www.r-type.org/exhib/aaa0241.htm
EF89 - IF AMP (two of em)
http://www.r-type.org/exhib/aaa0270.htm
ECH81 - AM Osc/Mixer/1st IF Amp
http://www.r-type.org/exhib/aaa0036.htm
EABC80 - FM/AM detector
http://www.r-type.org/exhib/aaa0405.htm
ECC82 - Audio amp
http://www.r-type.org/exhib/aai0081.htm
EL95 - Audio Power Amp (two in push pull)
http://www.r-type.org/exhib/aaa0406.htm

 

[chazz]

majortom ..tnx for the info. That bad cap/resistor combo find was by accident. It was more than a year ago so my memory is fuzzy and the notes I made don’t help yet. I was checking the voltages to try to compare them to those I could read on the schematic (hard to read the print on the schematics). When I touched pin 7 (Plate) on the first EF89 (6DA6)(Ro702)the AM stations came in full strength. I don’t remember how that lead me to the cap/resistor problem. Re an external FM Ant.. did that.
I don’t have a tube tester but have extra good tubes on hand. They worked OK in the other radio so assume they are OK.
Also.. on this radio, when on shortwave ( which works) the FM tuner (separate knob) is used to fine tune the SW band and that works OK.
We are currently using it on AM and will wait til cold weather returns (or more AM problems) before having a serious go at it.
In the meantime ..I’ll do some reading.
I managed to purchase a downloadable English schematic (about $4.00)from TheSchematicMan.com
Tnx again for the info.

 

[Jase88]

Ted Rogers' father (yes, Ted Rogers of Rogers Cable/Wireless) invented the battery-less radio. I used to work for Rogers...and I wish I'd taken some pics of their classic AC radio collection before I'd left the company. They have an impressive collection.

In my opinion, tube radios have the cleanest sound....much better than transistors.

 

[majortom]

Yeah that's a pretty famous collection so I've heard.

Chazz, just guessing, but thinking ya may find another cap or cap(s) that have expired themselves. Of what type was the one that caused the AM problem? If Paper/aluminum construction, like these.. if there are more like it in the set, I would just replace them all. As they are all probably leaky by now, even if not, they will all fail likely sooner than later anyway.

This article written by Phil Nelson makes for good reading.

http://antiqueradio.org/recap.htm

 

[chazz]

Yes majortom, it was similar to those you have displayed. It was not one of the can type. There are also some small metal covered caps, about 2 inches long by 3/8 in diameter as well as more of those similar to your picture

 

[majortom]

There are also some small metal covered caps, about 2 inches long by 3/8 in diameter as well as more of those similar to your picture

I would probably have to see a picture of the metal covered to identify those.
But if ya have more of the Aluminum/Paper construction sealed with wax, for sure those gotta go. Especially get rid of any in the Audio Power Amp Circuit. Hate to hear of one shorting some day frying the audio output transformer.
BTW, I save those as the wax can come in handy for re-stringing the dial cords.
Adding a little wax on the cord helps to keep the cord from slipping on pulleys, etc.