Start: Philco Portable radio " Scantanna"

[00:00:05]Hey everybody.

[00:00:08]>> So, I'm working on a radio for, believe it or not, for myself.

[00:00:16]Anyhow, I am barely coherent today because our radio museum had an all day event.

[00:00:24]Needless to say, I was busy all day.

[00:00:30]from about six o'clock in the morning till about 5:'lock in the even well in the evening.

[00:00:38]We had a great time and I think probably about trying to think how many radios went found new homes yesterday. Probably close to 80 radios got either auctioned off or sold.

[00:00:55]That's not including all the junker radios that were in the backyard.

[00:01:00]So, I've got this for myself on eBay of all places, and I got it pretty cheap. And I've always wanted one of these. I just love styling and everything. It's just styling and the color.

[00:01:13]And they're usually kind of expensive, but this one came with a cut cord, and that must have not attracted people because it was priced cheap. And it's also missing some brass pieces that would have gone on this handle. I'm not too concerned about that.

[00:01:29]It's a portable.

[00:01:32]And this is where it was cut. I was like, since this is my radio, I don't care. I'll just jumper this wire off of there.

[00:01:42]And it is pretty basic for it's just an AA5. The rectifier is not sure if you can get it. See this red thing? That's the rectifier.

[00:01:57]And there these are going to be one and three volt filament tubes.

[00:02:03]And this I'm guessing employed two different batteries. You have this battery which is probably your high voltage B+ and let's see what type of B battery would that be.

[00:02:25]It doesn't say the voltage. It's going to be 67. It's going to be 45,67 or 90 volts. I think it's probably going to be the ladder.

[00:02:34]And then the other the A battery is going to be excuse me that's probably going to be not probably it is going to be your filament battery.

[00:02:47]And the basic principled idea was is that your your B battery would be a lot more expensive. it'd be your high voltage battery, but the drain on those batteries is really, really low versus the A battery, which is for the filament. In some cases, the A battery would just be like a flashlight battery, and that would last you maybe like three or four hours, and then you'd have to replace it. But the B the Battery would go for 75, 100, 120 hours or more.

[00:03:18]This is got a PC board, and I didn't even look at the front. I'm guessing it's beyond 1955 cuz it's got this. Yeah. See the little triangles here? That's for civil defense. So that tells me it was between May I'm sorry I'm so tired.

[00:03:37]between 1955 and 1963 because after after everyone went ballistic with their missiles literally it made no sense to have a radiobased early warning system because it was no time.

[00:03:57]I'm going to confess that I know that it works. This morning I brought it up slowly on my variac and watched what it was drawing and it wasn't really drawing that much which it wouldn't because it's a portable workout. Now, got some dirt going on in the volume control. That's why it's making that god awful noise.

[00:04:32]But like I said, the reason I bought this thing is the way it looks. And this is going to be for me.

[00:04:39]Now, with all the other radios you ever see on this channel, when I get them, I tend to restore everything. Just replace all the capacitors, even if it works.

[00:04:55]But for me, I don't care. Like, if it works, fine.

[00:04:58]Realistically, I'm going to put this on a shelf somewhere to look pretty, and I know it works. And if it has a problem, I can fix it later.

[00:05:05]But I want to be able to take all of this out so I can clean the case because it's going to be impossible to do that with all this detail. And I don't want to leave the speaker and everything in there because that would just ruin it and get wet. And I've never worked on this model before, but what it looks like to me is you remove there's like two screws here and then there's one down here and that's it. So it shouldn't be that hard to remove this.

[00:05:40]It's called a scantenna because it has this goofy thing on the top that's for the ferite rod. Sometimes had one or two ferite rods inside.

[00:05:52]And what I really should do is get something to hold my parts in so I don't lose them.

[00:06:12]Anyway, there was one radio that was in the auction that I was going to bid on.

[00:06:19]Chickened out at the last minute because I knew this was coming and I paid nothing for it. Well, not nothing. I paid $25 for it.

[00:06:27]And the one at the auction was $225.

[00:06:48]Now, if I saw what was going on in here properly, this should just come out in one piece.

[00:07:07]Okay, it's not because these need to come loose too. This is the safety cord male end of it.

[00:07:28]All right. Now, let's try that again.

[00:07:30]Whenever you take something apart you're not familiar with, don't try to force it apart. You'll be you'll be sorry. You'll break stuff.

[00:07:42]Well, there you go. The whole thing just came out in one piece.

[00:07:52]It's pretty goofy.

[00:07:54]Now, what I want to do when I have this out of here is clean the volume control, but I'll do that later.

[00:08:04]I'm so tired. I realized that there's no way I can film cleaning this. So, I think what I'll do next since I've got the camera rolling is I actually have another set. It's a large True Tone that got donated less than 24 hours ago.

[00:08:26]So, let me go get that radio. Bring it over here.

[00:08:38]Get the rest of my parts away. Get this over here because it is a big This one I'm about to bring over here is quite a large radio.

[00:09:00]Get the camera off the stand. So, this is a true tone.

[00:09:06]And um to whoever donated it, thank you very much. If you ever see this episode, our museum u survives and exists because of things like this. And this is such a pretty set that, you know, we will look at something like this and determine whether we want to keep it for display for the museum or whether we want to turn around and restore it and and sell it. I can I can tell a few things.

[00:09:35]This is not the original finish. It's been refinished and it looks like there was a decent amount of damage and some of the damage wasn't really repaired. it was just finished over like we have something near missing here and there. I mean, it's it's fine, you know, it's it's an old radio. It doesn't have to be perfect, but this this dial is pretty fantastic. And when it lights up, I'm sure it's pretty spectacular. Now, True Tone, I don't know who sold True Tone, if it was one of the automotive suppliers or if it was a hardware store. I don't remember who sold True Tone, but it was one of the It was one of the chains.

[00:10:23]At least that's what I think it was. Let me look inside as my camera doesn't want to give me more cable. Hold on. It's stuck.

[00:10:35]There we go.

[00:10:41]True tone model D724 DRC factory number Western Auto. Okay, it was Western Auto Stores.

[00:10:55]That's who it was. Western Auto.

[00:10:58]And we have kind of a nice chunky transformer going on.

[00:11:07]80 rectifier 76 >> 42 I believe 42 is an output tube but it looks like maybe there's two of them that's the case that means it's got push pull audio yeah 42 42 so push pretty much guarantees that's push pull audio and then we have a three gang tuning condenser got an I tube but the bracket needs to be reattached.

[00:11:41]The I tube itself, I tested it before I left yesterday and it's actually good, which is highly unusual because most of the time they're not because it didn't have very long life expecties.

[00:11:56]Now, I'm also going to confess that I brought it up slowly on a variac before I left yesterday because I wanted to see what was going on with the power transformer and if there's anything I should be really concerned about. And I realize I'm not even talking to the microphone. It's over here on the other side of the radio. So, I'm sorry about that. Got too carried away.

[00:12:18]Anyway, what I was saying is it looks like it's got and I'm filming the microphone. I should not be making these videos. Anyway, it's got pushpull audio and uh seems like it should be a pretty good set. So, let me go attach the camera again.

[00:12:37]Really need to find a way to zoom out because the radio's too big to to get in the shot.

[00:12:51]Okay. Is it on already? Yes, it's on already. The cord on it is beyond bad shape. So, if you saw the cord, you'd be horrified. So, here we go. It's on.

[00:13:02]I'm going to do is I'm going to attach an antenna.

[00:13:05]I'm going to attach my uh roof antenna to this thing.

[00:13:19]All right, here we go. Got to turn down the what's going on in my Bluetooth thingy.

[00:13:33]My home stereo. I need to turn that off.

[00:13:35]Let's see.

[00:14:06]Okay, we have completely not good electrolytic capacitors. All I'm getting is a slight hum.

[00:14:20]It's good. That means the audio is good.

[00:14:28]So, that means I need to take the chassis out.

[00:14:37]Anyway, I don't have a lot of time before our next show, which is going to be another part of California. But the thing is we the our radio show was so successful yesterday that people wound up buying. We're just not used to this.

[00:14:54]We're not used to people coming to the museum all that much and actually buying anything from us, but they they cleaned us out of radios.

[00:15:10]And keep in mind, I've been going at these for quite a few months now in preparation for this event.

[00:15:21]I'm going to take that high tube out because if I drop that, the fact that it's good would be a real real crime shame.

[00:15:30]And we got a nice roll speaker with 900 ohms.

[00:15:38]It's about typical.

[00:15:40]And what is it held in there with flathead screws?

[00:15:58]I'm not going to be I'm I'm I'm not looking forward to what I think I'm going to find underneath here, which is probably going to be substandard electrical work. It's probably been repaired a whole bunch and it's probably going to have a bunch of dangly components stuck in there.

[00:16:21]Who knows what else is going on there, but at this age, I I highly highly doubt it's factory original. I would very be very much suspicious if that were the case.

[00:16:38]Not unheard of.

[00:16:54]If any of you had watched a previous episode, it was about me working on a Zenith portable.

[00:17:01]Unfortunately, that radio had some major major issues and um issues that were essentially not really worth fixing because when I went and looked the next day because I thought we had several of that same portable model and we do. We have three or four more of that same Zenith portable.

[00:17:25]So, we're going to you I'm just going to do what I usually do when I have multiple sets that are good with one that's not, which is keep the bad set on hand for spares for the other for the other three or four sets.

[00:17:52]Oh, well that's not good.

[00:18:04]That's not good to see either. There's like little pieces of electrical contact in there.

[00:18:18]Oh boy.

[00:18:38]Trying to think how I can set this where it's not going to mush anything.

[00:18:56]Okay, I see how this is held in. Let me tighten some things up.

[00:19:10]Okay, that's not going to do anything.

[00:19:11]That's pretty solid.

[00:19:20]Let's see what's going on here.

[00:19:26]Yeah, pretty much exactly what I thought I was going to find.

[00:19:32]different eras of repair.

[00:19:39]There's these General Electric electrolytic capacitors which are probably themselves long gone.

[00:19:55]Now, why you would do this is beyond me because you could easily run You could easily run your floating lead there and your positive there. Why did they do that that way? That is so dumb.

[00:20:13]And that's chassis ground.

[00:20:16]So you you could run that ground anywhere. You wouldn't have to go all the way through that.

[00:20:23]This thing has been in a barn or something. There's like tons of spiderw webs in here.

[00:20:28]And I got this fuse here. I guess that's all right. That's just sticking up in the air.

[00:20:41]But that I'm looking at this closer and closer. I I don't understand how there could be so few capacitors in it. I guess one, two, three, four, five, six paper capacitors. No, seven. And there's another one. Eight. There's another one.

[00:20:56]Okay. Well, it's there's hardly anything going on in this radio. It's very from a repairman's perspective, not as not as big of a pain in the ass. Now, what I'm going to do is replace these two electrolytics because I'm pretty sure they're no good anymore.

[00:21:10]Positive goes there. And then the floating ground goes there. Easy cheesy.

[00:21:14]And it's 20 microfarads at 450 volts.

[00:21:18]Surge is 525. Well, that's about what I would use.

[00:21:46]Okay, that's positive. And it just Yeah. Bizarre.

[00:21:57]Could have been someone's first project.

[00:21:58]You know, I remember some of the first radios that I ever restored probably had horrible things going on.

[00:23:25]I do want to test this capacitor just because I'm curious to see if that really was the problem.

[00:23:38]I these capacitors look like they're from the 1950s or something.

[00:23:46]What is this terminal strip?

[00:24:09]and that's one.

[00:24:13]And let's get this number two out of here. And then I'm going to fire it back up again. See if we get any any life out of it.

[00:24:28]Oh well, there's several things going on here. That is going positive and then three things going there and then the negative. That's chassis, correct? Chassis ground.

[00:24:45]Correct. So, where else is chassis ground that would be convenient besides that? cuz that's not very convenient at all.

[00:25:12]See that right there? It might not show up in the camera.

[00:25:16]See, it's kind of a little bulging right there.

[00:25:21]That usually indicates that the capacitors outgassed a little bit.

[00:25:25]That's not the great sign. Sometimes it doesn't finish them off, but sometimes it does. Now, this one also has a little little bulge there, too.

[00:26:05]Just want to see what's going on underneath this electrical tape here from this previous repair because it doesn't go far enough to I want to go and I also want to see what the quality.

[00:26:21]They knew how to solder. At least I knew how to solder.

[00:26:49]Anyway, I hope that you all in the uh y'all in parts of the country that are getting this all this horrible heat are doing okay.

[00:27:35]Okay.

[00:28:21]Quit being a pain in the butt. All right.

[00:28:52]There's some not great looking work in other places here. That does not look nice.

[00:29:10]That means I have to go around and check everything that was done in this to make sure. That looks like an older repair.

[00:29:16]Maybe the previous person was a little bit neater because their soldering looked all right.

[00:29:22]Okay, so now for the second electrolytic. Where did it go?

[00:29:33]Don't know.

[00:29:39]But that's okay cuz I have another one and I'll find the other one later.

[00:29:44]So, now that I've cleaned up all that that room, I could just run it from there to there.

[00:31:03]All right.

[00:31:05]Those electrolytics are now replaced.

[00:31:09]And you know, while I'm in here, I should probably put a less dangerous power cord on it. So, let me go grab a power cord from my stash.

[00:31:50]And this cord has a strain relief on it.

[00:31:54]So that'll have to come off.

[00:32:03]No, I didn't win the radio. Uh, someone else bid it up and I decided not to bid on it anyway because I decided that I didn't need to spend $225 on a what amounts to an A5 radio with a chrome front on it.

[00:32:21]But it seemed like whoever bought it was really happy about it. So, I'm you know what that's at the end of the day.

[00:32:29]I'd rather it go to somebody who will really appreciate it.

[00:32:33]So, I'm glad they want it and I hope that they enjoy it for many years.

[00:32:43]We had a tremendous amount of people show up yesterday. I'm guessing it was probably over a thousand.

[00:32:53]just blows me away.

[00:32:57]We were we were not much of an we were what you could call a parking lot organization for years.

[00:33:10]And now we have a building and everything.

[00:33:33]Yeah, there were a few things that didn't sell that we're stuck with still. So, there was a big juke box we had in it.

[00:33:41]That just comes to comes to show how much the jukebox collecting community or maybe the values have fallen because this this jukebox at one point was worth about 10 to 12,000 and we got we didn't even get an opening bid on it.

[00:34:03]I think the opening bid was like $1,000.

[00:34:08]for a restored jukebox.

[00:34:13]And a rare one, too. One that was only made for a few years by a company that went out pretty quick and went bankrupt.

[00:35:05]Anyway, I'm going have to help my folks out here in a few. Well, basically, I'm flying out there this week and uh my brother's going to come out there.

[00:35:19]I'm going to try to fix the front deck on the house cuz it quite a bit of dry rot.

[00:35:29]Can't have my folks walking out on the deck and falling off of there, you know, or having the deck collapse.

[00:35:40]Anyway, I don't have hardly any of my tools there, so I can't work on radios when I'm at home. Well, not at home, but in my parents' place Got new cords, new electrolytics. And what I want to do is clean this stuff out. Clean these contacts out before I give it another test fire because it seemed like I had connect not connectivity problems, but connection mechanical connection problems.

[00:36:30]That's the band switch on a switch.

[00:36:54]I'm guessing the other one must be a tone switch.

[00:37:19]I have to ultimately replace all the rubber grommets that are suspending the tuner because that's probably if that's touching ground anywhere that's going to be a problem. That might be a reception problem.

[00:37:34]Luckily, this thing has a super long speaker cable on it.

[00:37:50]But test these guys even though they're going into the trash immediately.

[00:38:01]So, you got to test this without it ruining the picture.

[00:38:13]Run the speaker.

[00:38:22]I tube can stay out of circuit.

[00:38:33]And let me connect the antenna.

[00:38:43]I'm still I think going to bring it up in the variac just in case I messed up something.

[00:38:48]Put the I think what I need is a lapel mic because I'm having to move the microphone everywhere.

[00:39:03]Okay, bear with me. I'm going to run it connect this to my variac.

[00:39:20]And we'll start at around 50%.

[00:39:28]Okay, 50%. We have filament, we have pilots.

[00:39:35]turn everything down because I had it cranked all the way before I Okay, let me go bring it up a little bit more.

[00:40:05]You know what? I've realized one of the tubes has popped out of the socket. Let me um turn this off.

[00:40:28]That was just sitting there cuz it's got this goat shield on there and that makes it difficult to get back in there. What are you number 75?

[00:40:44]This is not the original power transformer. It is It is absolutely backing up hard on that tube.

[00:40:53]I was wondering why it had such a massive comparatively massive power transformer.

[00:41:29]Well, what the hell? The other tube in front of it out of the socket, too. Hold on.

[00:41:36]Both of these have come out of the socket.

[00:41:54]the same thing these other All right.

[00:42:01]I've worked on radios for years. I've not had that really happen before. All right, let's try this again.

[00:43:17]249 is working. That's what you can tell.

[00:43:22]The minute is next as a multi-state outbreak of the explosive diarrhea parasite planter estrogen. I studied forever in Well, it kind of works, but we got a lot of issues. Uh, so we got a lot of dirty electrical contact problems, unknown quality and emission of the tubes. Seems like there's some uh maybe some distortion going on with the speaker.

[00:44:51]There's dirt in the volume and tone controls.

[00:44:58]There's probably some stuff going on with the connections.

[00:45:13]Yeah, a lot of people worked on these radios over because they were expensive as hell back in the day and it it it behooved you to get them repaired.

[00:45:23]I mean, if you went out and paid the equivalent If you paid the equivalent of like $500 to $1,000 or more for a a radio, probably wouldn't throw it away.

[00:45:36]Probably spend a couple of bucks to get it repaired. I'm going to put all these goat shields together.

[00:45:43]So, I tell you one thing, they've gotten expensive.

[00:45:47]Are they goat shields?

[00:45:50]They don't have goat written on them, but I bet they are. They just probably don't have their name on it, their brand name.

[00:46:01]What did I do with the parts? Oh, they're over here.

[00:46:15]Let me make sure I've got it unplugged from the wall. Got it unplugged from the wall.

[00:46:36]Well, just by default, it needs to be fully recapped. Test the tubes. In fact, you know what? Let's test.

[00:46:45]Go ahead and test the tubes now.

[00:46:51]I try to run these episodes for about an hour and I've got 45 minutes on the clock and then I need to do normal Sunday afternoon things because otherwise I'll just w the entire day working on radios all day long till the cows come home because it's I don't know what it is about it. It's highly addictive for me at least.

[00:47:15]And maybe I'm crazy, but I I ran into uh somebody who knew there's a repairman who was in San Francisco.

[00:47:28]And some of you guys who are in the Bay Area or California might have might know what I'm talking about.

[00:47:35]There's a guy who lived to be 102 years old has had Aladdin radio repair.

[00:47:43]He was actively repairing radios until he was like a hundred years old.

[00:47:48]And if he didn't have one to work on, he was not happy.

[00:48:00]And I'm kind of that way, which is kind of ridiculous.

[00:48:46]Okay.

[00:49:01]6 D6 6.3 GRO 2 3 4 2 3 5 4 3 5 4 21 Z Glad they quit making these tubes.

[00:50:00]They're just big pin versus the octal socket.

[00:50:08]Okay, that's the grid.

[00:50:11]and three.

[00:50:18]Pretty happy tube.

[00:50:21]No shorting.

[00:50:46]75.

[00:51:00]2050.

[00:51:35]What does 75 want?

[00:51:37]Three.

[00:51:40]What's the minimum on that? 19. Well, it's actually 30. That's pretty good.

[00:51:49]No tests. No, not no tests. No shorts.

[00:51:52]All right. 6.3 GR452.

[00:51:57]All right. 6.3 GR 4052 052 0 and 14 for my shut diode number one and minimal M's 40. Wait a minute.

[00:52:19]Minimum's 40 and I'm hitting 30.

[00:52:24]It's a little weak but it should be okay.

[00:52:27]3052.

[00:52:37]Say that one's reasonable as well.

[00:52:49]Aggravating.

[00:52:56]Yeah, that's that's not great having that right up against that transformer like that.

[00:53:14]This one has a grid cap that's kind of loose. It's become unadhered. We can't see what I'm talking about. There's a tube over here that's come grid cap is coming off. But if you push down while you pull the connection off, you won't rip it out of there. So, just an eye.

[00:53:48]Okay, this one's a silver tone 67.

[00:54:07]687 HR5 3462 and then 41 for the bias.

[00:54:23]and zero for the shot with our range at B. And we're going to press number three.

[00:55:00]That's all right. It's real slow, but is emitting.

[00:55:07]Well, I'm going to put a little mark on it because it is not great.

[00:55:19]Wait a minute.

[00:55:35]Look, the emissions start to collapse it. So, it's not stable. So, I I think it the radio should work okay, but this is probably work better if this were a better tube. I'm not sure if I have any 6 A7s laying about. I'll have to go look. In fact, let me write that down so I remember. 6 A7.

[00:56:03]Of course, it's probably not great not having the shields on these tubes like that.

[00:56:17]76.

[00:56:27]All right. 76 6.3 FR3 2040 204 and we want 29 for the bias and zero for the shunt and we want our range to be at B and our minimum of that is going to be about 76.

[00:56:53]No grid caps.

[00:56:55]Well, it does have a it does have a grid cap. In fact, I have no more grid cap tubes. So, this can go back up here.

[00:57:12]And 76 says to depress number three.

[00:57:17]Nothing wrong with that. That's a very happy tube.

[00:57:20]It's the best one in here so far. All right, you can go back in there. No problem.

[00:57:30]Now, let's get the two output tubes out.

[00:57:38]42 output tubes.

[00:57:49]All right.

[00:57:54]All right. 6.3 obviously GR4 2350 and then we want around 29 for the bias zero shut and then range is at B press Three.

[00:58:37]And if you get a gassy output tube or a shorted gas or shorted output tube, that can be definitely problematic.

[00:58:50]Test is good.

[00:59:01]All that. So that was that one's good.

[00:59:27]It's very happy too tube. These these almost measure about the same.

[00:59:32]No problem there on either one of these.

[00:59:41]Now, why am I testing the tubes?

[00:59:45]I'm testing the tubes because a lot of people just wind up not doing that and then they go through all these back and forths about what's wrong, why is it not doing this and that and they realize they haven't tested the tubes and you got a bad or a gassy or a marginal tube, it absolutely will is will affect everything up and down the chain. It's easy enough to do.

[01:00:06]So once I get a radio working that's and it's not working well, that's the first thing I do. And this this tube is disgusting.

[01:00:16]It's like it's got spilled all over it.

[01:00:23]Yuck.

[01:00:37]E R O 2000.

[01:00:55]Kind of don't want to stick this in my tube tester. Look at this. It's just got sticky goo.

[01:01:03]In fact, I don't really want to put that back in the tube tester or in the radio.

[01:01:08]So, let me go grab something else real quick.

[01:01:34]Much much nicer, but needs to be tested nonetheless. 80 That's all right.

[01:02:22]Let me do what I should have done, which is clean this tube pins off.

[01:02:57]Watch it test better even though it looks like crap.

[01:03:07]Nope.

[01:03:09]Actually, not at all. This tube tested better. Oh, goodbye.

[01:03:27]Well, that's a good start. Uh, I'm looking at my clock and it says I'm right at about an hour and two minutes.

[01:03:32]And, uh, I'd love to hang out with you all, but I need to Yeah, thanks, Doug. The event went pretty well. Um, there's a few things that we learned.

[01:03:42]Number one, when we do our broadcast or live uh live stream, we need to get better microphones because uh apparently they were you I did not know this until they started. They were using the microphone off of the computer way in the back and there was a bunch of us watching things like the radio play and laughing at it, not realizing that we were overriding a lot of stuff. So, Sorry about that. We were actually I think the radio play was going on and someone said like I can't hear it from all the background going on there. It's like we need to shut up back here and let them do the show. So apologize for that. Next year we uh plan to uh you know lessons learned and uh at least make the online presence way more uh enjoyable. So I apologize about that. The audio wasn't great. We're working on it.

[01:04:38]In the meantime, I will probably pick up this radio tomorrow and uh can resume. But right now, I just I'm tired and I think I'm going to go fiddle fiddle around in the yard and work on radios later. All right, take care everybody. Have a great evening, morning, afternoon, wherever you happen to be. And just remember, make life easier by being nicer to one another.

[01:05:00]Makes it easier for all of us. All right, take care everybody.