I was hoping this would be an easy fix to start my season. Alas it was not to be.

    At first glance, I could see that it had been worked on before, probably more than once. There were some very sloppy repairs that would need to be redone, and other components that would need to be replaced. But first i checked out the sketchy twisted wire power cord. It was shorted. I ordered another like it and temporarily patched in a modern one. It passed my dim bulb tester and I fired it up under full power with nothing but a slight hum from the speaker (at least the speaker may be ok). I next checked the tubes-they were ok-sort of.  I found a 35/51 tube where a 224 should be. Apparently the 35/51 is sometimes used as a replacement but I swapped in a 224. Still nothing. Upon further inspection, I found 2 loose wires without a home. Unfortunately they came from the output transformer. It was bad-but not all bad, the primary was good.

    The chances of finding a replacement transformer were slim to none, and Slim left town. I decided to do an R/C bypass which would allow the signal to pass through, but without the amplification that the transformer would provide. A bypass consists of 2 resistors and a coupling capacitor. I had acquired a few ready made by Anthony Pranzatelli of Tony's Capacitor Corner. 

As I began to hook it up, I realized the points I was attaching it to looked familiar

.  I believe this was a well meaning but botched attempt to do an R/C coupling, and I cut it out of the circuit

 I clipped the R/C unit in temporarily, turned on the set and burned out my 80 rectifier tube! I replaced all of the e-caps, thinking that may have had something to do with it, but I strongly suspected that one of the leads from the output transformer must've shorted against the chassis. I removed everything, replaced the tube, and brought the set up slowly with my variac. Everything held. I clipped in the R/C unit again, and slowly brought the set up. No problem-but no sound until I touched the antenna terminal and it roared to life! It definitely needs an antenna, even a short piece of wire. I soldered everything in place permanently, replaced the output transformer (with clipped leads) for show, as well as the cute yellow boxed capacitor in it's custom wire sling.

I'm awaiting the new power cord.

In the meantime, I took the cover off of the tuning capacitors and added a little lubrication where needed. This set uses a pinch dial type of tuning rather that a tuning belt or cord.

    All finished - 5/17/2026