Seeking vintage tube radio mentor...

[Zeke]

One on one mentoring preferred. Can correspond thru emails. Present skill level: new to the hobby; one year experience. I have a reasonably well equipped test and repair bench.

(I'm just putting this here because there are a lot of guests passing through and maybe the web crawlers will get some notice.)

If you don't want to join here, you can contact me through my FB page or website (do not use the form, use the email at the bottom). You can contact me thru Pelican as well.

Old radios, parts and equipment considered for purchase.

Location: Long Beach, CA and surrounds.

[Joeaksa]

Zeke,

I am an old time (and fashioned) ham radio guy and love tube type stuff. That said I do not have much time to do it right now, but thankfully have a guy about 10 years younger than I am who is an absolute guru on tube stuff.

We just restored a 1940 Zenith radio thats a rare model. Plus I have a full Collins tube setup from the early 1960's thats a KWM-2 unit. Setup and running on my bench right now, makes wonderful sounds.

How can I help?

[id10t]

No help on the new stuff - I've got a '63 vintage Blaupunkt (sp?) that came from Dad's '63 356 to eventually go into the '65 356 (the '63 was totaled in early '65, hence the '65)

Also have a 1957 vintage Grundig up on my shelf.

Planning on using them both as housings to hold a Pi or similar sbc and play MP3s off it instead of trying to fix up internals. Should be able to use the preset buttons and such to do basic navigation thru a playlist, etc.

[pwd72s]

Years ago, I developed an interest...but it faded. For a while I subscribed to this newsletter.
Antique Radio Classified - The International Publication for Vintage Electronics, Radios, Audio, TV, and Test Equipment Collectors

I also have an old Black dial Zenith portable...maybe late 40's, early 50's vintage. Model 6G601M,according to the schematic copy I picked up for it somewhere along the way. .
All intact except for it's missing front dial-speaker cover, and the rotted away leather top carrying handle. Tubes all there...dunno if they're good or not. Weighs a ton..I'm guessing around 35, maybe 40 pounds? AM band only. How that could ever have been called "portable", I'll never know. One of those "I'll have that restored someday" things. I know now I never will.

If you'll pay shipping, it's yours...even has the original owner's name & contact info inside. He died around 1958....

(edit) Did a search, found info with a photo. Evidently '41-'42. Speaker cloth intact on the one I have. That alone must be rare...

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/zenith_6g601m_universal_ch6b03.html

(another edit) with your wood working skill, I'm sure you could replicate the missing front cover as seen in the above image. Might be tricky to find the right weave canvas cover though.

[Zeke]

Thanks, Joe. Good to hear from you. The guys were just talking about you on the tabs AWOL thread.
I'll send a PM soon.

Paul, that's an interesting radio. Being 'portable' means it likely runs on a battery or 3. I have a very old again portable car radio that also weighs a ton. It's the transformer they used to get battery voltage up high enough to light the tubes. I'm more into wall voltage stuff. Don't toss it, I might change my mind after looking around. And thanks!

[pwd72s]

Yeah, there's a HUGE old (I'm sure long dead) RCA (?) Battery inside...but the museum specs in the link above says it can also run on house current...don't see a house current plug in though...

[Joeaksa]

Originally Posted by pwd72s

Years ago, I developed an interest...but it faded. For a while I subscribed to this newsletter.
Antique Radio Classified - The International Publication for Vintage Electronics, Radios, Audio, TV, and Test Equipment Collectors

I also have an old Black dial Zenith portable...maybe late 40's, early 50's vintage. Model 6G601M,according to the schematic copy I picked up for it somewhere along the way. .
All intact except for it's missing front dial-speaker cover, and the rotted away leather top carrying handle. Tubes all there...dunno if they're good or not. Weighs a ton..I'm guessing around 35, maybe 40 pounds? AM band only. How that could ever have been called "portable", I'll never know. One of those "I'll have that restored someday" things. I know now I never will.

If you'll pay shipping, it's yours...even has the original owner's name & contact info inside. He died around 1958....

(edit) Did a search, found info with a photo. Evidently '41-'42. Speaker cloth intact on the one I have. That alone must be rare...

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/zenith_6g601m_universal_ch6b03.html

(another edit) with your wood working skill, I'm sure you could replicate the missing front cover as seen in the above image. Might be tricky to find the right weave canvas cover though.

There is a large Repro market on things like dials, knobs and so on for these old radios, so hopefully would be easy to find things like front covers and so on.

[Joeaksa]

Originally Posted by pwd72s

Yeah, there's a HUGE old (I'm sure long dead) RCA (?) Battery inside...but the museum specs in the link above says it can also run on house current...don't see a house current plug in though...

These old batteries are NLA but folks are rewiring the rigs to use newer lower power voltage inputs. The batteries were designed for places like farms that at times did not have full time 110v power.

[LWJ]

I have shed all my tube related stuff. Mine was guitar amp centric. But darn, I do love some vacuum tubes. Simple. Understandable. Functional. And just cool.

[herr_oberst]

Since you have an interest in old radios you've probably already seen Mr Carlson's Lab on the YouTube. He seems to know his stuff, but I doubt if you would be able to set up correspondence. Maybe, though?.

[IROC]

My cousin is an expert on this stuff...

https://www.youtube.com/@d-labelectronics

He does a lot of guitar amp stuff, but his knowledge runs very deep in all things vintage...

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by herr_oberst

Since you have an interest in old radios you've probably already seen Mr Carlson's Lab on the YouTube. He seems to know his stuff, but I doubt if you would be able to set up correspondence. Maybe, though?.

He does Patreon for those that want to pay.

I know all of the more popular YTr's and then some. It's pretty much the same ol', same ol' after awhile. Some ah ha moments but there are 1000's of radios and brands.

Yes, RCA held the patents for years and the radio manf'rs paid ransom to build their version of the same thing. So many radios are extremely similar in construction. However a finicky problem can come up in the simplest set. They are highly tuned and once the signal is lost you might as well be looking for a diamond in the sand unless you really know electronics.

It might be easier to rebuild a 911 engine. I'll say this, if Wayne had taken a different path, his books would have made this a lot more easy. But he would have started with computers, not some old WWII era radio.

And I do have several books dealing with the era. There is a lot of theory on which I have somewhat of a grasp. But I can't sit down and draw out a schematic for a radio that would work. One has to just about be able to do that to go beyond the simple testing steps to isolate a problem area and then dissect that part.

I'm at the stage where if the compression is down on one cylinder, I should be suspecting valves and head gaskets and doing a leak down to listen. But any way you look at it you're still gonna have to pull the heads and then maybe the barrels because you can't see a cracked piston from the top.

And at that, there are no electrons involved. The problem, in essence, is invisible but can be seen or heard with instruments. Sounds easy enough. It's not for everyone.