Early 1950s Capehart AM/FM/Phono Console For Sale locally

[vortalexfan]

Hello everyone recently I visited a local fleamarket that has an early 1950s vintage AM/FM/Phono Console made by Capehart of Fort Wayne, Indiana (which is about an hour and twenty minutes southeast of where I live, and where my mom's mother's family is from originally).

The cabinet is in near mint condition and its even got its original manuals and antenna in an envelope in the back of the cabinet the guy selling it at the fleamarket said that the unit powers up but the radio doesn't work and the record player (which is a 4 speed record changer that was made by possibly Glaser-Steers or their own inhouse made changer as it doesn't look like your usual V-M changer) spins but not up to speed properly which might be an idler tire issue.

The owner wants $80 for the unit but would take less if it was bundled with other items, I was wondering if I should go get it or just pass on it.
It would be nice to own a piece of local history.

Any information would be appreciated.

Pictures of the unit in question posted below.

[Electronic M]

Capehart tended to be a good brand.

Value wise that ain't the worst, but if your a bargain hunter you can find similar stuff cheaper (at least in my region of the country).

What matters is whether you want to dedicate the money and space.

Also, most radio-phonos this old the caps need changing, the phono carts are usually shot (and you often have to improvise a replacement because NOS is usually bad too, and or stupid expensive), idlers vary...Some idlers you can wipe them down with GoofOff then GC automotive belt conditioner, and they will be fine, others have deep diviots, are too hard or too melty to save...Once you've done enough vintage electronic resto work it all starts to become 'same shit different set'...

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Capehart tended to be a good brand.

Value wise that ain't the worst, but if your a bargain hunter you can find similar stuff cheaper (at least in my region of the country).

What matters is whether you want to dedicate the money and space.

Also, most radio-phonos this old the caps need changing, the phono carts are usually shot (and you often have to improvise a replacement because NOS is usually bad too, and or stupid expensive), idlers vary...Some idlers you can wipe them down with GoofOff then GC automotive belt conditioner, and they will be fine, others have deep diviots, are too hard or too melty to save...Once you've done enough vintage electronic resto work it all starts to become 'same shit different set'...

I was thinking of trading the guy a couple of working mid-grade stereo receivers, a Kenwood and a Technics for this unit. Like I said the main reason I would get this thing is because I would like to have a piece of local history (being that Capehart was made about an hour and twenty minutes SE of where I live.)

[vortalexfan]

OK So I need a service manual for this radio, but can't find anything.

I've looked over at Nostalgia Air and they didn't have the Rider's Manual for the Capehart Model 1002 listed in their archives, they had the 1003-1010 model listed but they didn't have the 1002 listed (as far I know the 1003-1010 were basically the same radio as the 1002 but with different chassis and dial and record changer drawer configurations and different speaker configurations as well).

I also checked over at the the radio museum website as well and they also didn't have the Riders for this particular model in their archives (in fact I think they actually have the wrong rider's listed for the Capehart 1002 listed in the description of the Capehart 1002 radio on their website because when I checked Rider's Volume 19 Folders 19-33 which they had listed there in their website it said that that particular folder was for a Westinghouse radio instead and not for a Capehart radio.)


I also checked the Sam's Archive they had at RadioMuseum and they didn't even have the Sam's Folder for the Capehart Model 1002 listed in their archive which was Set 135 Folder 4.

It is annoying that they don't have either of the Rider's or the Sam's Photofact's for the Capehart 1002 Radio listed in their archive for download because they show them in the writeup about the Capehart model 1002 on their website but then when you actually go to look for them on their archive they're not actually there.

[vortalexfan]

OK so I picked up the radio this past friday, and the unit is in pretty good shape yet.

The only issues I could find with the unit was that the previous owner replaced the original cord recently with a modern mid 2000s power cord (where its has the one piece sheathing with the black and white conductors running inside of it) on the radio.
I think they also at the same time removed the original record changer (which had a flipover Astatic crystal cartridge) and scrapped it out and installed in its place a late model (between 1957-1959) V-M 900 series ceramic cartridged 4 speed record changer that really wasn't much better than the original as the replacement record player also didn't have the standard 1/2" cartridge mount holes on it and the cartridge on it was just glued into the tone arm at the factory.
But then the cartridge broke off the tone arm so now the changer is no good unless I glue the cartridge back into place (the cartridge is a Sonotone 2T ceramic cartridge that still works actually just broken loose of the tone arm.)

Another interesting observation I made about this unit is that it plays hum free with the original Mallory Power Supply Capacitor can intact yet and almost every single backlight bulb for the tuner dial was burned out except for one and the pilot bulbs were type #44 bayonet bulbs which look just like type #47 bulbs but I'm not really sure what the difference is between a type #44 and a type #47 bulb is but there must of been some sort of difference otherwise this radio would of had type #47s in it rather than type #44s in it.

The other thing I noticed is that the tuning dial pointer on this radio is backlit as well and has 2 light sockets in it one on top and one on the bottom and they have two glass windows cut into the pointer that is painted black and the top one lights up the pointer for the FM Band and the bottom one lights up for the AM band and it lights up the respective pointer light for whichever band the radio is set to on the band/mode switch, but for some reason or another someone at some point in time cut the wire lead that powered the AM tuning dial pointer light socket so only the FM dial pointer light socket worked and not the AM one, which seems kind of bizarre that someone would do that.

[Electronic M]

IIRC the difference between 44 and 47 is one is 150mA the other is 250mA...Higher current also means brighter and hotter... Hotter can melt plastic dial scales. In AA5s you gotta use the right one or the dial lamp and or rectifier filament will die prematurely.

Maybe it was owned by a stoggy parent...FM was pretty much classical and easy listening only till the 70's, AM was where the Rock was. It could have been sabotaged to avoid AM.
During WWII the government did something similar German families suspected of being Nazi sympathizers....Their radios SW bands were disabled by the government to prevent them listening to German radio transmissions.

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

IIRC the difference between 44 and 47 is one is 150mA the other is 250mA...Higher current also means brighter and hotter... Hotter can melt plastic dial scales. In AA5s you gotta use the right one or the dial lamp and or rectifier filament will die prematurely.

Maybe it was owned by a stoggy parent...FM was pretty much classical and easy listening only till the 70's, AM was where the Rock was. It could have been sabotaged to avoid AM.
During WWII the government did something similar German families suspected of being Nazi sympathizers....Their radios SW bands were disabled by the government to prevent them listening to German radio transmissions.

That's interesting, I never would of thought of that. I was able to repair the dial lamp that was cut by taking some wire and splicing it in using solder and shrink tubing, unfortunately the dial pointer wasn't moving with the tuning knob for some reason so thought it might of been because someone restrung the tuning dial at one time or another and didn't do it correctly (didn't get the correct tension or wrapped the dial string around the tuning knob incorrectly so I thought I would try and restring the dial but I couldn't figure out the correct amount of times around the tuning knob pulley because like I said previously I couldn't find a service manual for this radio online anywhere for free download (nostalgia air didn't have it in their riders archive even though riders covered it) and Radio Museum didn't have it either (they didn't have the Sam's for it int their sams archive and they didn't have the Rider's in their Rider's Archive) and I don't want to pay $25 for the download at the Sam's website) and as a result of not knowing the correct restringing procedure for this radio I accidentally broke the tuning dial string which I now have to figure out what the length of the tuning dial string is that I need (which would of been in the service manual but since I can't find the service anywhere on line I'm kind of stuck trying to guess how much dial string I need because unfortunately I think whoever restrung this radio got too little dial string which might explain why the dial pointer had a hard time moving with the tuning knob).

I was wondering if there's any other websites other than Nostalgia Air or Radio Museum that would have my radio's service manual (either the Sams or the Riders).

[WISCOJIM]

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by WISCOJIM

I actually ended up breaking down and going to a website called The Schematic Man which is run by a website called Steve's Antique Technology and they had the Sam's Photofact as an Instant Download for $6 which is way less than getting it directly from Sam's.

And as I suspected the tuning dial was restrung at some point in time in the radio's history and whoever did the dial restringing restrung it wrong which was why I was having issues with the tuning dial not tuning properly, and because of that when I tried restringing it (before I realized it was restrung improperly) I tried restringing it like the previous person had restrung it and I ended up breaking the dial string so I had to order some new Dial String material from AES (which I got about 6 feet of it so I had plenty enough to go around for a couple more radios in case I get another radio that has a broken tuning dial string.)

I'm guessing I'm going to need about 2 feet or so of dial string to restring this radio as the Sam's for this particular model didn't include the dial string length for some reason (which I know they've included that information on other radio service manuals before but it seems that they just forgot that tidbit of information on this particular unit.)

A nice helpful feature that this radio has is that all of the small pulleys that are used in the stringing of the tuning mechanism of this radio are color coded green and the ones that aren't used as part of the stringing of the tuning mechanism are color coded white.
That is a really nice and handy feature that when used in combination with the tuner stringing diagram in a service manual helps you get the tuning mechanism restrung correctly.
There are 4 small pulleys all together on this radio chassis one on each corner, and the ones on the upper left, upper right and lower right corners are the ones color coded green, corresponding to the pulleys used in the tuner dial stringing process and the one on the lower left corner is the one that was color coded white indicating that it wasn't to be used in the dial stringing process.

Unfortunately though whoever it was that restrung this radio's tuning mechanism previously was either an amateur who didn't have access to to the service manual for this radio or they were just plain lazy and weren't paying attention to the dial stringing diagram in the service manual because they used all 4 of the pulleys in the restringing job they did to this radio previously which they weren't supposed to do, they were only supposed to only use three of them (the green colored pulleys) which is why the tuning mechanism didn't work correctly (it would get hung up when tuning it either up or down when you would get to the middle of the tuning dial and the tuning knob pulley would slip).

And before I saw the stringing diagram for this radio I attempted to restring it like it was done before but trying different numbers of turns around the tuning knob pulley and that's actually how I ended up breaking the dial string, but once I saw the actual stringing diagram and then saw the pattern the green pulleys were in that was when it clicked in my mind that that was why the pulleys were green colored in the pattern that they were.
Before that I noticed the green colored pulleys and the pattern they were in but didn't know why they were in that pattern and thought it was kind of weird that they would have 3 green colored pulleys and 1 white colored pulley with the green pulleys being in a triangle pattern.

[vortalexfan]

OK so I got the tuning dial string restrung properly finally but now I have a new problem. When I first got this thing and powered it up when I got it home, it worked fine, didn't even hum, but now that I took it apart to repair the dial string and repair the dial lamp that was cut out of the circuit in the tuning dial pointer I went to hook it back up to test it and now the unit wont power on (the tubes wont warm up and the dial lamps won't glow).

Any ideas as to what might of happened with the unit, and what I might look for to try and get it to run again?

Also I did replace some tubes that measured bad including the rectifier tube (they weren't completely bad but they measured right around the question mark or a little lower on the tube tester).

any information would be helpful.

[Electronic M]

Maybe that cut out of circuit lamp socket was shorted, and now that it is back in the heaters are not lighting because of the short.

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Maybe that cut out of circuit lamp socket was shorted, and now that it is back in the heaters are not lighting because of the short.

Hmm, didn't think about that. unfortunately the way they made that backlight setup for the tuner dial pointer assembly its near impossible to replace that socket...

Also I should add that none of the pilot lamps are lighting up either and with this being a cold chassis setup (it has a power transformer) it should be able to still light up the pilot lamps even without the rectifier tube in place but even without the rectifier tube in place (and even with it in place) the pilot lamps aren't lighting up. Would one shorted pilot lamp socket cause all of the pilot lamps to not light?

Also the other thing is that the pilot light that was cut out of the circuit was for backlighting the FM Dial portion of the Dial pointer assembly not the AM which means that if I took that back out of the circuit again and it started working again I wouldn't be able to see where the dial pointer was on the FM Dial because of how they made this radio.

[Electronic M]

Unless there is a separate heater winding just for the dial lamps; One short on the heater/dial lamp line will eliminate all heater voltage in a transformer set.

Another possibility is some sort of failure of the AC supply to the transformer...You can rule that out by turning the unit on and measuring the resistance across the unplugged power plug (should be ~10-400ohms).

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Unless there is a separate heater winding just for the dial lamps; One short on the heater/dial lamp line will eliminate all heater voltage in a transformer set.

Another possibility is some sort of failure of the AC supply to the transformer...You can rule that out by turning the unit on and measuring the resistance across the unplugged power plug (should be ~10-400ohms).

Ok, I'll check that out. I'll take a look a the service manual and see what the pilot lights are running off of and then check the resistance reading on the power cord with the set turned on and unplugged.

[vortalexfan]

By the looks of the schematic the pilot lights aren't running off the tube filaments, they're running off the mode switch?!

I measured the resistance on the power cord with the radio turned on and the radio unplugged and the cord measures open (the meter starts off at about 2.2 MOhms and then works its way up to an O.L. reading).

So then how the heck would the AC side of the power transformer suddenly just go open without me doing anything to the radio?

Radio schematic posted below.