Thread: Philco 16/16b
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Old 06-19-2017, 10:33 AM
dieseljeep dieseljeep is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ZenithDude88 View Post
Your Philco is from the late 1920s between 1927-1929 and with as crispy looking as your speaker is you'll likely either need to source a new cone and replace the old cone assembly yourself (which will be a pain seeing as this is an early paper cone speaker) or try and source a new speaker (even harder because they don't show up that often on ebay). I don't have any experience personally with overhauling pre-WWII radios but from what I've read and heard they can be kind of tricky because sometimes the capacitors for the tuner assembly were potted in a bakelite box that was packed with tar (Philco was especially notorious for this)and this can be quite tricky to handle.

With as bad of condition as this unit is in I would of passed on it because of the fact that this unit will require a lot more work and effort to refurbish than its worth.
I had to do this recently when a local antique mall had a late 1920s RCA tabletop radio for sale in their shop for $15 which I thought that was a bargain until I saw the condition of the cabinet and the guts, the cabinet had been water damaged severely to the point that the veneer was peeling off the cabinet and the guts where severely damaged by mice and deteriorated wire insulation among other things which I had not the time nor expertise to deal with so I ended up passing on it.

Although if you have more experience in woodworking and speaker repair and have the patience to replace old deteriorated wire then you did fine in saving this unit.
But since I've only been working on antique radios for about 10 years as a side hobby and I know nothing about how to repair veneer work on a radio cabinet and I don't have the patience it
takes to remove and replace hundreds of feet worth of deteriorated/mice chewed wires in a radio I would never even attempt to restore a radio like this.

Just my 2 cents worth.
Your 2 cents worth isn't worth quite that!
The Philco 16 series is a 1935 or '36 model and a very impressive set.
A very high performance 11 tube chassis.
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