Wood Radios

This is an Admiral AA6 tube 6T01-6A1 chassis in a wooden cabinet meant for an Admiral AA5 tube radio 6T04-5B1. The 6A1 chassis uses a variable inductor to tube the output of the RF stage, and a variable 2 gang capcator for the antenna circuit and the local oscillator.



Replaced the wax caps and the filter electrolytics in the 6A1 chassis before even powering it up. And found that a 12SH7 sharp cutoff tube works better than the 12SJ7 it calls for. Needed to retune the antenna cap trimmer a little. Just above is a closeup of how the variable inductor that tunes the output of the RF amplifier was done. A spring loaded arm rests against a cam attached to the tuning dial drum that also tunes the variable cap. The shape of this cam was designed to control the arm, which in turn moves the ferrite bar in and out of the coil. This shape was made to have the tuning of this coil track what the variable cap for the antenna circuit is tuning. It's possible, back in the day, Admiral couldn't obtain 3 gang tuning caps but still wanted to make a radio with an RF stage. And someone designed this workaround. Which actually works quite well.
An Australian MW radio set: Calstan


An AM/FM prewar set, this one by Emerson.


Caution, screwheads on bottom of cabinet of the
578A are directly connected to the powerline!

This FM tuner uses octal tubes! Model XFM-1

The GE model 1284A set above needed its high voltage audio output transistor replaced. Used an NPN bipolar transistor from the switching power supply of a junked monochrome monitor to replace it, worked fine. If you have a GE radio like this one that is dead, check the output transistor. I've had several with bad output transistors.
This GE C1580Z is the 1284A with clock.

The homebrew set below uses GE circuit boards almost identical to those in the GE T1290A and T1290 sets above.


Here I installed a powerline RFI filter behind the speaker Radio now almost seems like a portable on batteries.

This homebrew set above uses a GE circuit board almost identical to that in the GE T1290A. Right click "view image" to see the schematic, with my mods, full size. These mods include a separate AM detector using a base-collector strapped transistor for better weak signal demodulation, an RFI filter on the incoming powerline, and changing a grounded (with respect to RF) base bipolar transistor to a grounded gate JFET in the FM RF amp stage; this is to improve the RF stage to have good strong signal performance, ie, better FM receive dynamic range, ie, a better intercept point. avoiding intermod products. You'd want this if you live near New York City, with its crowded FM dial, right.



Installed a similar filter in this Hitachi solid state radio as well. Works well.

LW SW MW

Meissner 9-1047A tuner for the old 45MHz FM band.

Motorola

model 54C, chassis 59

This T601 has FM channel numbers, most don't.

RCA
A clock radio/TV
AM/FM stereo tuner

From Spain:

A European tube import
.. A Steelman 4AR12 console set, AM and phono:

This Truetone is virtually identical to my brother's Lafayette set.

A nice tube radio with extra B+ on the audio output stage:
The H458T6 is just like this except brown trim instead of black around the front. See below. Using a 19HR6 tube in place of the 12BA6 in the IF amp stage improves the sensitivity of this set. This radio may be easily converted to 240VAC operation by removing the powerline (mains) connection from the center of the autotransformer to the top (rectifier plate). Leave the heater string connected to the center tap. See the diagram here.


This below Zenith had its selenium rectifier replaced by a silicon bridge. Details here.

Nice solid state hot chassis AM/FM with scrolling dial and 6 gang (3 AM, 3 FM) tuning cap: