I found this today. Zenith TO G500
 

Found this today. Looks pretty good. It is not working. supposedly it just needs the 1L6 that is bad. I have one coming, so I shall see. I do notice that I'm missing the suction cups for the WaveMagnet, but that's it.

https://i.imgur.com/qtvr0zC.jpg?1

https://i.imgur.com/ZeEruRo.jpg?1

https://i.imgur.com/bC5ZVjp.jpg?1
https://i.imgur.com/MOo3gaT.jpg?1


My dad had one just like this when I was a youngster.

The suction cups are usually petrified and or rotted by now. Rubber typically never ages well 5+ decades into its life.

These will work on the AM band with a cheap 1R5 (the 1R5 won't oscillate into the SW bands). These should be serviced to prevent possible filament overvoltage on the 1L6...Those are rare expensive tubes; wasting them by gambling on the chassis state is not a wise move in my book.

Is a 1R5 the same as a IR5 One R5 or EYE R5?

I found some on Ebay. SOme are called IR5 and some are called 1R5.

It's 1 (one). It denotes the filament voltage which is actually about 1.4 V at 50 ma. There's a family of these 'one volt' miniature battery tubes like 1U4, 1U5, 1S5 etc. And there's 3V4, 3Q4 etc., which have a 3 V filament. And they're all 50 ma., intended for series-string service.

Series string? SO, that means when one tube goes out, nothing works in the radio at all? Pardon my tube illiteracy.

Unplug the red ribbon cable from the chassis receptacle and plug in the red plug with the black leads, otherwise the wave magnet won't be in the circuit.

Yep, did that. that particular photo was from the for sale listing, and not my pic.

I would imagine that even if I had the original suction cups, they would probably be hard and worthless anyway. So, after I get it serviced, I should have a pretty good radio, I would think.

It means if one filament opens none of the tubes will operate. One tube could have a short or no emission but a good filament and the other tubes would function despite the 1 tube having a defect.

Also, these battery tubes have extremely dim filaments. They may be difficult to see even in a dark room.

I will probably plug in the 1R5 and see if it plays. I won't chance it with the 1L6.

I would guess that the original battery packs would be pretty worthless by now. Is there something that would work instead? It would be nice to take this TO camping.

Don't assume that the 1L6 is blown just because it is the most famous part of a T/O. [I]any[/] filament open will shut down the radio - but the most common source of total silence from a T/O is the selenium rectifier under the chassis (a modern silicon diode that costs a dime will replace it, but you'll have to do underchassis surgery and add a dropping resistor).
I suggest you try operating it on batteries (ten cheap 9V batteries for the plates and five AA alkaline or six ni-cad for the filament string).
If you hear anything, you know there are no blown filaments.

I pulled the 1L6 and looked at it. It's dark frosted, and there are a couple cracks by the base of it.

Batteries may seem to be cumbersome and/or expensive, but if you want to hear anything clearly, you'll need batteries (in the twenty-first century, where there's an AC outlet, there's a ton of RF noise).
Don't expect to hear anything on 49m during the day, and don't expect anything on 19m or 16m at night (ionospheric physics).
If you listened to shortwave twenty years ago, you'll notice that Europe shut almost all international broadcasting down.

What do you mean by 'dark frosted'? The inside of the glass will have a coating (the getter) that normally is brown, black or shiny silver on a tube under vacuum, but turns powdery/chalky white if the vacuum has been compromised.

The original batteries are indeed toast. Series 9V batteries and AA or C/D cells are acceptable alternatives. Be careful not to mix up A and B battery terminals...I've blown multiple tube filaments at once more than once (luckily not on a TO) making that mistake.

Another option I've seen is putting ~6 D cells and a switch mode boost supply into a gutted original battery case. Antique radio classified had an article on building one back in ~1993 that I had some success building ~5 years ago...There may also be a pre-built option as I've seen more than a couple floating around at swapmeets.

Dark as in it looks like carbon. Like it is burned. The cracks at the base are pretty obvious, as well.


My tech guy will be going through everything, and making it like new.