Old radio find

[altivo]

Came home to discover a large antique radio cabinet in the garage. Gary pulled it in from one of the neighbors' trash piles. It's all intact and except for a lot of dust, appears to be in good restorable condition. General Electric, I'm guessing pre-WW2 vintage, but no model identification remains. I think it might be fun to repair and restore this, but it will be on hold until after the holidays at least.

	GE Radio cabinet front closed I'm sure the pulls are supposed to have little dangly brass ornaments or loops but those are gone. The wood is in surprisingly good condition, though, except for a few chips on the top. Approx. dimensions are 60 in. high, 32 in. wide, and 18 in. deep.
	GE Radio cabinet front open Speaker grill work and cloth is intact. It appears to be AM band only, with knobs for tone, volume, and tuning. On-off is the tiny knob below the tuning dial. A brass toggle switch on the center of the right hand side of the cabinet is probably a fringe-local switch for the tuning circuit.
	GE Radio rear view Two chassis, the top being the receiver, the bottom being the power supply and audio amplifier I think. No label remains with model information, alas. The one at the center behind the top chassis just says that the manufacturer recommends genuine RCA tubes. I'm betting that the large loudspeaker is one of those "dynamic" speakers that has a large DC choke coil instead of permanent magnets, and the power supply uses that coil as a filter choke. That explains the practice of putting the power rectifier next to the speaker along with the audio amplifier stage.

Comments

[quickcasey.livejournal.com]

That's even older than the one I gave Mr. Zenith. Er, I mean aerofox

[kamo2paws.livejournal.com]

Those stand up radios are much harder to find than the smaller ones of the same era.. We have probably 100-150 of those radios in the family because one of us collects American radios pre 50's

[fandt4.livejournal.com]

That's a very decent looking GE you have there. Why anyone would toss out a complete vintage console radio is beyond me, barring space reasons, and even then, it's near blasphemy. ;p

I am left with only one working console radio at the present time, a Rogers Batteryless of similar age to the GE pictured above, though I had two other Philco radios of the pre to mid-WWII era. And, as hypocritical as it may sound, space reasons really did force me to get rid of them.

Radios of this era are fascinating, but I've found that keeping them in operable condition can be quite costly, depending on the model rarity and the array of various tubes required. While they are fine to simply look at, nothing beats the warm sound of vacuum tubes.

Good luck with the future restoration. : D

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

A GE H-31

http://www.mcclellans.com/images/RadioCollection/Dandridge/DynamicDemoGE.JPG

http://www.mcclellans.com/NewRadiosPage.htm

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

Except the H-31 doesn't seem to have the doors. Aerofox would know. Anyway, 1929-1930 TRF set, probably an 80, a bunch of 26's for RF stages, a 27 for a rectifier, and a 45 for a power output tube. If the 45 is still there, don't break it...they're as rare as hen's teeth and (as we say in New England) wicked expensive :P

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I think it was actually manufactured by RCA...GE did that in late 20's and early 30's (again, Aerofox would know ;)

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

Aerofox would know.

That's what I was thinking immediately when I saw it. :-) It looks similar, maybe, to one he posted a picture of in his journal?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Congratulations! You beat aerofox to the answer. Obviously, ours is a different cabinet style, but probably the same circuit.

That McClellan collection is pretty impressive and certainly shiny. I'd love to have just one of those old Atwater Kents. And I've hungered after one of those old "farm" sets in the cathedral or tombstone shape for a long time. The only affordable ones I find are always gutted and losing all their veneer.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, I expect aerofox will know, possibly even the entire circuit and the full list of things to be repaired, as soon as he sees the photos. I mailed them to him before posting here, but he probably hasn't gotten around to them yet.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, I have suspicions as to the why. I think someone's marriage is on the rocks. All the kids are in college now, and he's almost never home. She's a Martha Stewart fanatic type and if he's actually moved out, she's tossing his "old junk".

If it's as old as lobowolf suggests, then I doubt it's a family heirloom in either of their families. He probably got it somewhere because it looked interesting and then never did anything with it.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I wish I had the ones from my grandmother's house. They probably got thrown in the junk when she died. She had an Atwater Kent "table radio" that was actually a table. The radio was inside it, and the huge speaker pointed down at the floor. It still worked perfectly when I was a teenager, and my grandfather listened to baseball games on it. She also had a Philco "chairside" radio with shortwave bands in addition to the AM. It sat next to an overstuffed chair and could be used as a convenient table to put a drink or your books on. the controls and dial were recessed into the top. That also was still working when last I saw it.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes, my first guess was around 1938-1940, but if lobowolf is right, then it's almost ten years older. The cabinet is in excellent condition so it looks like a prime candidate for a serious restoration. The only things missing are the little dangly pulls for the doors.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

I know..some folks have some really beautiful collections. I've never lost interest, but I stopped collecting when I moved out here into the old (and teeny-tiny house). The new house is bigger, but not big enough to support a thriving antique radio collection

When I first became interest in 1979, people were practically giving radios away, but once it became an "established" hobby in the late 80's, prices skyrocketed, and since I didn't have any money at that time, I couldn't afford to buy any nice radios.

I do want to get back into fixing them, and I'm in the process of rebuilding my test bench so I can do so, but "stuff" really drives me up the wall and I like the house free of excess clutter, whether it be radios or whatnot. I would consider collecting again if I could build a barn like Aerofox's...the barn I have isn't weathertight and it's very small, so the radios would get ruined.

[quickcasey.livejournal.com]

Even better, it's a rubbish rescue.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Uhh. That's definitely older than I thought, but you're right, it explains the large number of tubes rather than the five or six you'd expect in a more modern superhet. It also means those tubes aren't octals, but the old four and five pin bases that can be so difficult to extract without breaking something. Thanks for the warning, I'll be extremely cautious.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I could never get into collecting them the way Aero has. I love to touch and look at them though, and would really enjoy having just two or three nice examples to display as furniture. I've got a late 30s Philco table model sitting here that looks real nice. It's dead, probably the power transformer is shot, and I've never really tried to restore it to working order, but I love the look of it. The case is still real wood and it's one of those big ones, about a foot tall and 16 inches wide, with push buttons that you set by adjusting trimmer caps inside.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yep. It's a top notch find. And just after the big rummage/garage sale thing last weekend too.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

Yeah..they just use 3 or 4 RF stages and then right into a detector and into a power amplifier. That looks like it has two output tubes..45's or 47's (but probably 45's).

Because there's IF section and no conversion, the audio on TRF sets is fantastic. The down side is that there's no AVC, so if you crank it up to hear a soft station, and then tune across a loud one....KAWHAM! Oy. :P

Assuming the power transformer is good, it probably wouldn't be too hard to get running.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

Likewise. I do want to get back into fixing them, but I will probably keep a few and just sell the others.

Hard to say what's wrong with the Philco without looking at it, but power transformers don't go bad that often..probably needs new electrolytics and paper caps, and maybe a rectifier tube. Early to mid 30's radios are my favorite, particularly Philcos and Zeniths. Post-war sets are just completely different to me...there are some nice ones, but they just don't seem to have as much class.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

This one has loctal tubes, those odd 7-pin things. The filaments are not in series, but none of them light up. That was why I assumed power transformer right off, but as I say, I haven't really looked at it. Could be just an open power cord I suppose.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

That was my first conclusion, the rectifier and two power amp tubes in the bottom. Did they put the amps in parallel or some kind of push pull arrangement?

Must be a lot of RF stages. No wonder it was apparently receiving on just a two foot loop of wire instead of a real antenna. Could be great for late night broadcast band DX with a real antenna attached, but I'm familiar with the volume phenomenon you mention... I won't even think of putting headphones on it.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

You got it. Most console radios have two tubes in push-pull for the audio amplifier. In sets that have a separate power supply chassis, the audio tubes are almost always on the power-supply chassis.

[lobowolf.livejournal.com]

It's particularly unusual for a filament winding to go open. I know of the loctals you speak of (the "7" series). Philco seemed to favor these starting around 1938 or so, although I'm not sure why. Loctals were popular in automobile radios because they didn't vibrate out of their sockets, but I'm not sure why Philco used them in home sets, since nobody else used them in home sets (that I'm aware of, anyway).

It is possible that the primary is open on the transformer, which would suck :/

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

O.O

Goodness knows what kind of news broadcasts that thing has shouted out in it's time. Maybe the famous coverage of the Hindenburg disaster. The outbreak of WWII. JFK's assasination. The mind boggles.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Yes. My first thought was actually of the classic radio drama and comedy, something I'm very fond of when I can listen to it, but you're right about the news too. Quite possibly the Hindenberg and almost certainly World War II news. Franklin Roosevelt's famous fireside chats, as well.

Now the JFK assassination is probably too late. By then, everyone was watching television and this set was already stored somewhere gathering dust, but I'll bet it covered the bombing of Japan at the end of the war, and that infamous election where the press declared Dewey the winner but Truman actually won the presidency.