Nostalgia is not lost on me. To that end I truly enjoy bringing things back to life of the electronic type, that should have otherwise gone in the dumper.
Currently there are countless transistor radio’s that were dead and now work once again at least as good as they did new, and some of them probably better as materials are now better. While the challenge of transistor radio’s is finding the parts; tube radio’s magnify that issue as no one is making new tubes for radio’s that I know of.
My latest project is this Tube Radio that I have had well over 30 years. I bought this for next to nothing and of course it did not work. If the case is in good shape and the parts are all there, that is about all I require.
The Radio is an Emerson 744B that was made in 1954. It sold for $34.95 which, back then was a heap of money.
Sadly there are many that will read this blog and not know what a tube is. With that in mind I have taken pictures of my latest project and will “splain” a few things as we go. The glass objects are tubes. These either are dead in the case of the rectifier tube or weak or leaky as with the rest.
The tubes house a filament, some metal structures that emit and collect electrons as well as things that control the flow of the electrons. Some house a thing called a “getter.” The Getters sole job is to collect and burn off any o2 that should get in by way of the pins. The getter is coated with a chemical that accomplishes this.
The British refer to these “tubes” as “valves” and in actuality that is a much more accurate description as that is in essence how they work.
This is the audio output tube in action. Notice the filament is glowing.
Here is a top view of the radio in operation.
Here is a bottom view of the radio showing the point to point electronic components. If you know anything about electronics you will notice the modern parts that I have installed, replacing the parts that failed.
Back in the day, capacitors were expensive to manufacture so they would use just what they needed and nothing more in terms of capacitance. Today that is not the case and with technology I was able to offer much more capacitance and higher working voltages to the circuit for around $6.
One old .05 MFD capacitor is still in the radio and functioning so I left it. The white square capacitors replaced two of the three .05 which are now .047.
The two modern electrolytics replaced the huge combination capacitor that some “purists” will actually disassemble and install the newer capacitors inside of it. I know very few who are going to take the metal bottom off of the radio and look underneath to see the parts. This radio sounds like a new one.
Here in North Texas we have a station that plays music from the era that this radio came from. http://www.kaamradio.com/
Big Band music I just never get tired of…. Anyway, this radio sounds great playing that station.
-Best to you and those that you care about..
TheTimeDok 