"New" RCA TRK-12

[vts1134]

An RCA Victor TRK-12 found it's way to Pittsburgh this week. After much heavy lifting and effort it is in its new home in my basement. I can't believe how heavy these suckers are! This particular TRK-12 sat, bolted to the original shipping crate bottom, unsold in a closed department store for over 70 years. At some point the store had RCA perform the postwar tuner upgrade to adjust the channels from 1-5 to 2-6. When the store closed I suppose they decided it was too heavy and worthless to do anything with. I guess you could say I'm the "original owner" of this set .



I'm so used to seeing vintage sets with moisture damage to the bottoms that I found myself laughing when I saw the bottom of this set.





I couldn't resist powering the amplifier up with a fused variac, slowly raising the voltage over a couple of hours. The original electrolytics barely gave an audible hum over the next hour or so as I rubbed a coat of wax into the finish and listened to big band favorites through its original 75 year old components. Quite a treat!