dhermann1
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 9,154
- Location
- Da Bronx, NY, USA
Bomber General! Nice job! Curious about the dial glass. Is that hard to come by? I have had a Philco 40-180 that I managed to squish the glass of. I'd love to get it restored.
That is indeed the record size -- the record changer needs to know whether it's going to be dropping 10 or 12 inch records in order for the arm to move to the right start position.
I strongly recommend West-Tech Services for getting your needle situation squared away. On most of these record players, the crystal cartridge has gone bad -- the thing the needle fits into -- and replacements are no longer manufactured. West-Tech rebuilds your old one, guaranteed to work as good as new, and can supply you with needles. That looks like it takes a regular steel Victrola needle, but you'll be nicer to your records if you use a sapphire tip, which West-Tech can supply.
Once you get the phono working, you'll wonder how you ever did without it. Nothing beats 78s played thru a tube amplifier.
As much as I like the Philco shown above, my 1952 Hallicrafters TW-1000 is my favorite. It sits atop my dresser and sees frequent use. While not an Art Deco piece, its receiving abilities are hard to match even with today's equipment. "They don't build 'em like they used to."
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Just got this from a coworker. It will be my first attempt at a full resto-sometime this year.
Mike
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The nice thing is, it from the lower price range and therefore not as complicated. So it should be a really good starting point where I don't get frustrated with all of the electronics. But I have several other projects ahead of it.
Mike
Just picked up a Zenith Transoceanic 8500YGT to replace the one that was stolen off my front porch twelve years ago. It was not as nice as my old one, but some black shoe polish applied to the leatherette case cleant it up nicely.
It didn't work when I first tried it, but I took out the chassis and could see that the main trouble point in these sets, a big wire-wound power resistor, had already been replaced. So I sprayed the tube pins with Deoxit, worked some into the bandswitches, and now it's sitting on the kitchen table playing quite nicely. "Information Please" is on, and every nuance of Clifton Fadiman's voice is audible.
I got a surprise when I opened the back of the case. Usually old portable sets like this one will have the remains of a battery pack in the compartment, and that's usually a mess to clean out. But this one had just the battery connector and a small part of the cardboard battery casing. The rest of the battery pack had been eaten by mice, who had turned it into an extremely impressive nest which is now inside my vacuum cleaner bag. How they managed to digest the zinc and the electrolyte is a mystery lost to the ages.