Retired EE in Canada - fun with vintage radios

[RobertoPaolo]

Hello Everyone. I used to fix old electronics as a teenager, now doing it again in my retirement. I have all the vintage test equipment and am getting going with a few pieces to refurbish. I have: RCA 9EY3 45 player, RCA 45-J-2 45 changer, RCA 810K radio, Westinghouse 785A, 780C, and 754X radios, Electrohome Crescendo IIIa radio/phono, Phonola 40U52P radio, Philips 778-2 radio/phono, Clarion 12310 radio/phono. I am coming up to speed on learning best approaches to refurbishing and I welcome help along the way - with tips / sourcing parts etc. I am excited about joining this group! Paul

[electra225]

Welcome to our forum, Paul! We look forward to helping you any way we can with your projects. We also like pictures! As a gentle reminder, please include your location in your user profile, per the rules. Then you will need to post an avatar by your third post. We do this to assure that our new members are real people. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. Again, welcome aboard!!

[William]

Welcome, Paul, and it looks like you have a nice collection. What Electra 225 said about finishing your registration that way you can take full advantage of the forum and all of its resources. I am looking forward to you sharing your collection both with photos and stories that go with the photos. Feel free to ask away if you have questions and if we can we will be more than willing to lend you a hand.

Bill

[TC Chris]

I've got a collection that's about as eclectic as yours (it includes an RCA 811K, likely a year newer than yours, and an RCA 45 EY2, likely a year older than yours).

As an EE, you can probably teach the rest of us some lessons. The one thing that experience teaches is replacing capacitors that are likely to fail. That means those in any old device and especially the ones with power transformers. The filter caps have a high likelihood of failure and will take out the PT with them. Same with paper coupling caps, which can take out nice output tubes with them when they go. I grin about my Sansui 1000A, a popular high-quality tube receiver that I found sitting at curbside. It is notorious for failures in its oil-filled caps. Mine had been set out in the trash because all the tubes were brand new but one of the brand new output tubes had burned up from a leaky coupling cap. The owner apparently gave up after spending all that money on new tubes.

That is the end of my wisdom. Now we will wait to hear stories and see pictures from you. We all like pictures.

Chris Campbell

[Conelrad]

Hi Paul,

Welcome home to CHFC!

Please post some pix of your Westinghouse radios for me.

Thanks, Dennis

[electra225]

Have we lost Paul?