Freed-Eisemann Educator

[Sandy G]

Gonna be a LOT of work, but that Bad Boi will look AWW-SUM-to use the Young Peoples' favorite exclamation- when you get it spiffed up. I'd do a good cleaning, maybe some corrective surgery, a couple of coats of black shoe polish before I ordered up any Tolex.

[bandersen]

Originally Posted by Reece

What a hunky radio and speaker. I'll bet it will sound good. This must be from the last gasp days of Freed-Eisemann. That case could be stripped and recovered with Tolex the way they do with Transoceanics. At least with the dearth of grille cloth these days there is still available plenty of cloth for guitar speakers, which would not look bad with Tolex.

That could be an interesting project. I've never worked with Tolex before.

Originally Posted by DavGoodlin

I had an Admiral radio exactly like that. My first experience with the bad mica capacitors formed into the IF can bases. Bought a new IF can for it by Miller, back when you could walk into the jobber and buy stuff, you know.

Yeah, if they're bad, I'll have to attempt a repair. I bet it has the mica caps that are riveted to the base and exposed to the air

Originally Posted by Sandy G

Gonna be a LOT of work, but that Bad Boi will look AWW-SUM-to use the Young Peoples' favorite exclamation- when you get it spiffed up. I'd do a good cleaning, maybe some corrective surgery, a couple of coats of black shoe polish before I ordered up any Tolex.

We'll see. I'm going to head out later and peel off that electrical tape.

[bandersen]

I pulled the chassis out tonight. That is indeed a 5Y3 in the 5U4 socket.



It seems service info is non-existent so I'll have to wing it. My only concern so far is the unmarked candohm resistor in the lower right. I'll try to measure it's value before attempting a power up in case it burns out.


The cabinet is definitely going to need some work.

[leadlike]

Tolex is easy to work with-since your original covering doesn't seem to have shrunken up much, you can just peel it off and make a pattern from that. The Tolex cement is a type of contact cement, so your experiences in applying veneer will come in handy here. As a bonus, the black stag pattern that I ordered is a great replacement for the leatherette decoration missing on some of my old cameras.

[bandersen]

Originally Posted by leadlike

...you can just peel it off and make a pattern from that...

Thanks for the great suggestion!

While I wait for paint to dry on my Brunswick 5KR, I took a whack at this set. A fellow collector kindly sent me a scanned schematic.

Another collector sent me this note

"I read somewhere that Freed-Eisemann played their cards very close to their vest with service information, because they were trying for some type of captive service on these units?"

First, I pulled the 5U4 rectifier and fired it up. All the tubes lit up and I have ~700VAC on the secondary


Next, I'll replace the three electrolytics and all the paper caps.


Here's a nasty cap going right from the AC line to ground. I'll replace it with a Y type safety cap.

[bandersen]

I finished the recap, and it's playing nicely No surprises this time
The FM is especially nice. Just using the power cord as an antenna, pulls in plenty of stations.


The eye tube is a nice touch

[grimer]

I had one of those "Freed-Eisemann Educator's", I paid 10$ for it and it was
in decent shape.I sold it 3 years ago..Now I have to search my back up drives
to find a picture of it to post

Found it !

[bandersen]

Thanks for the great photos. I hope I can get my cabinet looking as nice.

[Kevin Kuehn]

Oh-oh - it's for "classroom use only".

Very cool set, I'd never seen one before.

[dieseljeep]

What's the candohm resistor in the corner used for? Output tube cathod bias? It seems like they used parts that were laying around. The radio appears to be built in the late 40's, early 50's. Looking at all those old Solar capacitors. I didn't think they made them that late.

[Sandy G]

Those "Majic Eyes" were just Kewl as all get-out... Even better when they actually WORK...

[bandersen]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

What's the candohm resistor in the corner used for? Output tube cathod bias? It seems like they used parts that were laying around. The radio appears to be built in the late 40's, early 50's. Looking at all those old Solar capacitors. I didn't think they made them that late.

Yes, it's the cathode bias for the 6L6 output tube.