In 1963 my Godfather/Uncle came home from the Army, he had been stationed over in Hawaii with an Infantry unit, thankfully he got out just before they were shipped over to Vietnam for the beginning of that little skirmish. When he got home, he gave me his Voit diving mask and swim fins because he knew I loved the water, he had used them in the Pacific off the coast of that little island, and a small transistor radio. I had never even heard of such a thing, as new ideas were slow to arrive in our small town in the Dakota's. I used to love that little radio, I would take it to bed with me at night and play it very low, holding it to my ear since we were, at the time, living in a tiny 2 room apartment of sorts, a family of 5 in 2 rooms calls for some sense of quiet after lights out, and it was enforced quite brutishly by my father, who had been a farmer up to that point, and having sold the farm on yearly payments, money was very tight as was tension in the home as we settled into town life after years on our own on the old home place, now but a memory in my lonely mind. Laying awake on that folded out scissors couch, holding that tiny radio to my ear, those squeals and squawks of the distant stations that blasted in after the sun set was such a thrill, hearing music I had never heard before, rock and roll, country hits, and God how I loved that blue grass gospel music. Your videos sure bring those days back, it is simply wonderful to sit here now and enjoy the sounds that played so long ago on a radio now but a memory. Thanks so much for the great entertainment of your videos, I keep going back and re-watching the old ones, and rejoice when a new one comes to the web!

that is the strangest repair job I have ever seen . I know people can do great work but I have not seen that before . you do great work and are a man of many trades and enjoy all your videos thank you for sharing this

That is the cleanest radio chassis you have ever had in your videos up to 2020.

I never noticed Modern Talking playing on that radio at 37:50...I'm glad it survived this musical torture from Germany! :)

That radio turned out to be a better performer than i would have predicted. I remember staying at the LAX Marriott on Century in the mid 90's, and sitting out on the balcony of the room with a walkman DX'ing the AM band, 660 KTNN cranked right into SoCal. I'm surprised that Firestone rig was able to even pick it out with 640 not far way. Another good video!

Your rf can driver tool kit reminds me of my watercolor brush set. I like how you preserve the character of the exterior. Many times that image/impression tells its story.

When I was a young man, and serving in the US Army, one of my buddies from High School ran into me at a local bar, where I was downing a few beers and talking about my adventures. He had joined the Fire Department, and all volunteer agency. They had a radio shaped sort of like that one, I don't recall the brand, but they had painted it red, which of course, is the color of the FD. What he wanted was a red bulb to make the dial light up red. Well, at the time I was on leave from The Old Guard, out in the DC area, we did ceremonies and had theatrical lighting as part of our duties. So the next time I came home on leave, I brought him some red jell paper that we used in the spot lights during Torchlight Tattoo, and Spirit of America pageants which we produced for the Washington Elite, and several times a year for the Public. We tore the radio apart and inserted the jell paper behind the glass, it was amazing! I still use different colors of gel paper in my projects to change the color of displays and lights where needed. Hell I even put red on the dash of my old 1963 Ford Econoline van we had converted to a camper van for traveling while i was in the Army, it looked very cool at night and kept my night vision intact much better then the plain dash lights that came in the rig.

Uncle Sam sent me to south eastern signal school ft Gordon. GA. AND got a real good time with radio repair. But all ways rem: safety first. Hot Chassis . Ist nixt gut. a few feet away you could not hear the hum I bet. Tks Fer good show. Kv4li

I don't recall who's video it was, but one of the radio repair guys uses contact cement on speakers to revive them and repair rips. He never puts anything on the cement, just allows it to dry on the speaker. His explanation is that it re-bonds the surface on very old speakers and allows them to once again reproduce all the tones that have gone missing due to aging of the paper. It appears to work very well at bringing back the bass as well as the high notes.

The Firestone radio would look cool painted in the same green color as that light.

there is no "best" AM radio, thank you for opening my eyes to the two methods of AM stereo, and demonstrating the dimensional vs flat~ nowadays there does not have a special switch for stereo, the ole Grundig did not have a switch for stereo~

Hearing the am radio take me back in time. thanks!

You've got to wonder how many of these bad old fixes we're a kids first attempt to repair something...

Good Job fixing that old radio up. Glad you got it going, sounds pretty good. Interesting, informative video as always.

Great job, I enjoyed this one alot. Whenever I buy a radio, I always cringe when I see stuff like that under the chassis. I was honestly quite shocked that it worked as-is, I expected the pilot light (and maybe the 35Z5) to fizzle. But I've seen worse. I had a radio where someone replaced the output transformer, and epoxied it right to the tops of the 50L6 and 35Z5 tubes.

Looks like a job for spagetty. Insulation. Where possible. A 80% hum reduction good job.

That turned out to be a decent radio, after cleaning things up and tweaking. The audio sounds a little better after putting everything back in the chassis. Thanks for the video.

AM was the earliest modulation method used for transmitting audio in radio broadcasting. It was developed during the first quarter of the 20th century beginning with Roberto Landell de Moura and Reginald Fessenden's radiotelephone experiments in 1900.[1] This original form of AM is sometimes called double-sideband amplitude modulation (DSBAM), because the standard method produces sidebands on either side of the carrier frequency. Single-sideband modulation uses bandpass filters to eliminate one of the sidebands and possibly the carrier signal, which improves the ratio of message power to total transmission power, reduces power handling requirements of line repeaters, and permits better bandwidth utilization of the transmission medium. *sounds greek to me

That buzzing may be power line intermodulation. The aerial power lines act as an antenna; they soak up a good bit of RF. Usually where the lines are spliced together (at a transformer or intersection) , one or more of the splices will become somewhat oxidized and act as a rectifier. The amount of rectification on the oxidized surfaces varies with the 60 cycle current. So the mixture of RF and 60 cycle through the same oxidized joint will cause 60 cycle modulated RF to be re-radiated on the line.

Interesting witnessing you go thru the deductions and corrections. :)

Man, I've seen some cobbled up repair work but this one takes the cake! Very sloppy indeed!

Those white capacitors look like the ones I once got in a parts kit from Lafayette radio back in the 60's! That heater tap is NOT in the middle! IT's only about 5 volts worth to provide power to the panel lamp. Those tubes could be operated without the lamp, when the lamp is in place the heater is deprived of some power, but it gets hot enough from the remaining 30 volts across the rest of it. Sometimes they have even tied the plate to pin 3 and used the heater as a current limiter for the B+ supply! Guess you'll replace that broken tube socket for the rectifier.

Shango talks about 'J' hooking, which sounds sort of self explanatory. When a chassis had posts or terminals the correct practice was to clean everything then offer up and orient the component - note lead position and lengths- . The lead to be terminated has been chosen and you know where the bend will occur. A pair of long nose round section pliers is used to bend the lead to 180 degrees. Place around the terminal, ensure a snug fit and solder with multicore solder using a clean, wetted iron applying heat to the opposite side of the post. The lead is clipped to length and the joint inspected. That is MIL SPEC. termination circa 1950. I was taught this in 1982! We also learned to lace cable - amazingly that has come in useful! This was the last few years of specialised technical colleges in the UK. A 180 degree 'J' is quite enough and often the idea of having a good mechanical connection is misinterpreted. It does not mean the wire needs to be bolted to a vice or tied in a knot - It means the parts to be soldered need to be firmly held together when the soldering takes place. This ensures a good and reliable joint. Sorry if this is a bit boring. EDIT: I just found out how to -strike through a line- Aha.(start and end with hyphen - no spaces though - -no spaces though- )

In tuning the IF cans, could you cut back the level of the RF generator? At high level, it's just blasting its way thru the IF strip, making it hard to hear a peak.

no static between stations, extraordinary~

oh my heart ached when i saw the Repairs.

At the 36-37 min mark, am I seeing filament light coming through where shango repaired the speaker?. Nice radio!

I worked on my neighbors hybrid Sylvania 19 inch color set. The previous tech just taped the new ashcans (filter capacitors) to the bad filters and didn't disconnect the open bad ashcans. The old ones shorted out blowing the circuit breaker and shorting out the diodes in the power supply. That's the first botch job I had to correct. The TV repair shop.that did the original botch job finally went out of business. My neighbor wanted to stomp on his head!!!!!

35z5 had a pilot lamp tap at pin 3. there is a reason why its done like that.

nice sounding after fixing the hack.

After you posted the last video featuring this set, along with the repair of the cloth covered one, I found a few examples on a certain auction site whom will not be named. It seems that the older versions had the larger square IF cans with the trimmers in the top like one would expect with an octal tubed AC/DC radio (there were some for sale featuring pictures with the back off. Too bad about the crack in the bottom but at least it's easily repaired with epoxy glue and bondo, unlike the ones I saw on that auction site with chunks out of the side.

5:25 that would make an excellent star trek sound

Surprised the signal generator ground didn't take out the lights without a iso. Xfmr..a matching toaster would be good 😁

I would deSoilder and redo everything from scratch + maybe do some cabel management 😉

Lov the old radio .

I like the renegade pilot light! 😳 I am charmed by the way it shows the starting power surge! And then indicates the warm up is done.😸 Why do you keep trying to break that cheesey solder joint in space? 😮

3:48 - The previous owner didn't even replace the paper caps!

Good save and very interesting! Point of injection of signal/sweep generators and where to tap/look for the signal, in both tube and transistor types, is a subject that I need more experience to fully understand. As you make your videos, if ever you wish to comment or explain further about this key procedure, it will be very, very much appreciated!

I used to use Duco cement or Elmers Glue All to repair tears on speaker cones. Worked for me!!

It was a pity that some H.F. Hum was still present ,but I think that hum is partly coming from the video camera,otherwise it was a good demonstration how to restore and resurrect an old radio with tubes. Thanks very much.

You have a nice "tire radio" there. The botch jobs you can find in these old radio's still surprise me. I think that dial would look pretty good with a NE-2H or IN-3, but I dunno if its worth the effort with that (probably filter yeah) buzz. Its always disappointing to find new caps in an old radio you think is stock even if its not a botch job. Its about the magic!

The squealing on some stations is due to 455khz harmonics from the diode detector feeding back to input usually around 910 or 1365. shielding of diode detector can eliminate this, A tin can cut to shield diode detector and its circuitary is needed. IF Selectivity issue possibly due to degraded Mica in the base of ktran, maybe best to do the IF transformer surgery and connect external caps

Very impressive video.

Firestone did radios back when? Fascinating!

Interesting layout

Something about that radio It's face reminds me of Admiral Ackbar a Star Wars character

wow. I am impressed it worked even a little bit right off the bat. I want to fix my late 30s early 40s halicrafters set. I have all the tubes, knobs, ect but it is missing the dial cord and the speaker/audio output transformer. What will I need to do to get it working? I have a capacitor/inductor/resistor tester with capacitor ESR, so I am fine there, but no signal generators or modulators.

2:53 - That's the 'cat's whisker' :)

this is performance art!~

"The price of repairs doubles if you tried to fix it yourself and couldn't."

So was the camera in manual focus? Still a good video. Thanks Shango.

i wish i had one of those spiral basket antenna's that's on the back of the backboard. that style of coil form makes great pulse induction metal detector coils when wound with litz wire, i want to strip off the wire so i can make a 3d print file of the coil form.

I, Love this radio :-*

Max Robinson has provided an excellent explanation of how the dial lamp circuit works: www.angelfire.com/electronic/funwithtubes/AA5-1.html Basically, the lamp is in parallel with a 6.3 volt section of the rectifier tube filament. On initial power on, the filaments are cold and draw a lot of current. The lamp is supplied approx. 6.3 volts and lights up normally. As the filaments warm, the resistance drops, the lamp receives less current, and dims. However, the B+ is connected through the lamp and tapped filament section. As the B+ starts to flow (when the rectifier cathode heats up), the lamp receives more current and comes up to full brightness. The circuit works well if the filaments start out cold. However, if the radio is turned off and then right back on, there is a surge of current to charge the electrolytic capacitors. The lamp glows brightly. It and the tapped filament section may burn out. Avoid turning the radio off and immediately back on!

2:30 - As Dave from EEVBlog would say "That's a bit 'how ya doin'!'" :)

What a cheap and nasty way of fitting a dial light. Better to have a proper 120 / 6.3 Volts transformer to supply all 6.3 V filaments in parallel. ( It probably comes down to costs ) Radio works well.

I have a Hallicrafters S-22r with no factory solder on oscillator coil. Just wire wrapped to connection point. Also a resistor with a dead short wire across it from factory. It works but the resistor cannot be doing anything. Not sure what to do with it.???

ok, Shango. I liked this video alot. I would like to ask what kind of camera you used , cause its great quality.

Find somewhere that supplys 9 to 12v dc and use a warm white led strip, far more efficient and will last forever

Why didn't that pull down to next tot the condenser get swapped out?

That radio looked like someone was trying to train chimpanzees to repair radios. Like a NASA experiment gone wrong.

Fire Stone? ... Fires Tone!

I LOVE YOUR VIDS sorry for the caps im a rl dj

Thanks!

I know this is a bit late but I think I know why the alignment didn't go well on this radio. I've got a beautiful 1940 Emerson and was looking at the schematic. Under the alignment instructions it says "Always use as weak a test signal as possible when aligning the receiver." You mentioned you signal was VERY strong and I'm thinking it swamped the circuit.

Is there a part 3

all that wining you did about the radio, and it was a easy fix,

rtv black, what is used on differentials does the job~ dries in five minutes~

those wire blobs are obvious amateur wire splices, the previous person who was working on that radio had no idea what they were doing and most likely didn't have the right equipment to do what qualified for a good job when it came to said wire work, a proper splice if any, would be a cleaner appearance, that and if It were done right, would be compared to either your work or the work +bandersentv hen it comes to professional repairs

Dial lamp must double as a fuse if something shorts

Shango likes to dial twist for much of the video.

I like the other radio better. Cabinet has more character

Did you try it first?

Firestone made radios?!

Absolute crap job. Good work cleaning that mess up.

2:17 oh lordy

i pluged in a old crt tv one day, it blew the breaker box

They just hung the ashcans (filter capacitors) any old way. Really sloppy work I would have ran the dial light off a separate small low voltage transformer and connect 1 lead of the transformer to the on off switch

Hasnt the person who soldered all this heard of heatshrink tubing? ffs that thing was a fire waiting to happen. Nope the japanese caps are very good especially sanyo, its the chinese no name specials that are trash

Hate working on someone else's mess.

mmmm massage power~

Remove all resistors, capacitors and wires. Rebuild from schematic.

unlike the other videos you have uploaded quality was not looking like 720 for some reason. blurred/smoothed out too much and out of focus.

there is one station that I can get the Giants baseball the A's are on FM but have bought so many damned AM radios, my grandpa's GE model would if in a certain position in the house...all have a certain whoo-wooo woah to the signal, perhaps it's the "superhederodyne" but only the BOSE can get the baseball, and the CCrane~ which is so tightly put together, never goes back after trying to replace the antenna, a penny glued on, but there is nothing to grab onto, so the antenna is a real can of worms on the CCrane and you Need it~ am so disappointed with the battery Hungry CCCrane~ have had three and they are digital, but station at Clearlake,....there are NO stations up here~ attempts to use the signal accelerators failed, apparently there is something weird, cannot drive thru town, the signal is intentionally muddy, it seems~ the BOSE on it's side saves the day, runs hot wondering when it's gonna catch fire~ "Easy-brake, oven" there is no handle and one switches the stations trying to handle it, it has four D cells, and always uses them dead, 'cause the weather-alert drains them~ plugging in just makes the noise appear, and does not recharge the batteries~!

Cut all of it out and start over.

Looks lik e a toaster

Video speed is to fast it seems.