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Old 04-18-2004, 01:48 AM
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Here is my incomparable Philco 70 Cathedral

This is my pride and joy. I bought it off eBay nearly 2 years ago. I restored it myself to nice working condition. The finish was ok, so I just used some walnut stain and lemon oil to bring back the shine. Electronically, I recapped it. Looks original on the chassis top. I also found a nice brass dial escutcheon to replace a cracked bakelite one.

She sits on a table by my bedside. I usually fire her on late weekends to listen to OTR radio shows that I broadcast on the AM band using a cool little "toy" called the Wild Planet Radio DJ. The OTR shows are downloaded from the Net in MP3 form, then burned in to a CDR and played back on a Sony portable MP3 player. This in turn connects to the "Radio DJ" which puts out the signal on the AM band. The transmitter uses a crystal and originally had a fixed frequency of 1710 kHz, way too high for the Philco. I then found another crystal to bring the frequency down to 1500 kHz which suits her perfectly.

You just have to hear it to believe it, it's like going back in time. The MP3s sound great on the air, and received with the warm quality of the Philco's tubes! The little toy even has a cool "On The Air" sign that glows in the dark while the Philco is playing!









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Last edited by crooner; 04-19-2004 at 02:20 AM.
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Old 04-18-2004, 09:41 AM
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Beautiful Philco. That lil' DJ thingamabob is new to me...what a great idea IMO. Must be fun to hear your MP3s over the airwaves.
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Old 04-18-2004, 11:07 PM
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Crooner, that is so cool!

Beautiful radio, too -- I'd like to have one similar to yours someday.

As you well know, one of the big drawbacks of restoring these old Broadcast Band radios is that there's hardly anything on the air that's worthy of them. I think that many others are going with setups similar to yours, to get the sounds that are appropriate to the vintage of the radio.

Here's a kit for an AM broadcaster I came across on a website just the other day. This guy offers the same unit assembled and tested, and also a cheaper kit. I wonder if these things work any better than the FM transmitters that I've tried in the past? They probably do, since there's no stereo to worry about.

Last edited by Paula; 04-18-2004 at 11:50 PM.
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Old 04-19-2004, 02:13 AM
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Hi Paula,
Thanks for the nice words!
Yes, I have wondered about that too. The Ramsey kits were an option I was considering back when I started to restore my Philco. But then I found out about the "Radio DJ" and for only $20 it was worth a try. Well, the sound is so good, that I don't think it could be improved by costlier transmitters such as the Ramsey! Take my word for it. And it's available at the local ToysRUs! And if you don't like the appearance of it, you can always install the guts in a different case.

For FM, I found another $20 gadget called the "Soundfeeder SF-120" Wireless CD player adaptor. This is intended to broadcast the output of a CD player to any car FM radio. But it is just a flea sized FM Stereo transmitter on a chip. I bet it uses the same chip as the Ramsey transmitter.

The "Soundfeeder" is the size of a pack of cigarrettes and it's the black tiny box with a little antenna sticking out of it, sitting just on the left side of my Philco in my earlier pic (behind the Radio DJ).

I sometimes hook the output of the portable MP3 player to it, and broadcast music in the FM band. I thought the sound was marginal until I tuned the signal on my Fisher 500C. I was shocked at the quality of the sound! No, not professional standards but quite decent. A lot of hiss tho. And I am pretty sure the hiss is caused by the wide dynamic range of CD recordings sans compressing. Well worth giving it a try. Same for the Wild Planet Radio DJ.

Here is another shot of my bedroom showing the Fisher 500C:



Regards,
crooner
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Last edited by crooner; 04-19-2004 at 02:18 AM.
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Old 04-19-2004, 08:27 AM
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Crooner- Nice job on the Philco. Chassis looks very clean. You have a very nice set-up.- Sandy G.
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Old 04-19-2004, 08:39 AM
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I've built the better Ramsey AM transmitter and was disapointed in it's sound quality and noise level. I have a feeling these are probably better: http://www.ontheair3.com/ As far as FM goes, Ramsey does offer a decent FM Stereo transmitter for around $250. For those on a budget the C Crane/Sangean digitally controlled FM Stereo transmitter is hard to beat @ $69.95http://www.ccrane.com/fm-transmitter.asp I own one of these and it works great!
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Last edited by CELT; 04-19-2004 at 08:42 AM.
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Old 04-19-2004, 11:53 AM
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Not understanding a whole lot about the technical aspects of what distinguishes AM from FM, I'm puzzled as to why these AM broadcast modules require a dedicated crystal, whereas the FM transmitters usually have tunable frequency selection.

Also, I use one of the C. Crane/Sangean FM transmitters to play my iPod thru my Quasar GXD700, and have not been all that pleased with its performance. The Quasar sits on the headboard of my bed, and the Crane sits right next to it, and I still sometimes have trouble getting a clean stereo signal. As far as getting it to work from accross the room -- very dicey. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. I really like the design of the Crane, though.

Paula

Last edited by Paula; 04-19-2004 at 11:55 AM.
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Old 04-19-2004, 12:09 PM
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Gee, maybe you got a dud? Mine works great. Maybe the I-Pod is generating some digi-noise into it. I can go anywhere 75-100' around and outside the house without any probs. I couldn't find the link, but there is a fella over in the UK by the name of Tony that builds some great small, digitally controlled AM trnasmitters. My brother has one, and it broadcasts the highest fidelity I've ever heard over AM. As far as tuning goes, any transmitter worth it's salt is either going to have a dedicated crystal for it's frequency or be digitally controlled thru synthesis.
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Old 04-26-2004, 03:06 PM
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Quote:
Originally posted by Paula
Crooner, that is so cool!

Beautiful radio, too -- I'd like to have one similar to yours someday.

As you well know, one of the big drawbacks of restoring these old Broadcast Band radios is that there's hardly anything on the air that's worthy of them. I think that many others are going with setups similar to yours, to get the sounds that are appropriate to the vintage of the radio.

Here's a kit for an AM broadcaster I came across on a website just the other day. This guy offers the same unit assembled and tested, and also a cheaper kit. I wonder if these things work any better than the FM transmitters that I've tried in the past? They probably do, since there's no stereo to worry about.
Paula - The AM rebroadcaster idea is good (I used one of those as the transmitter for a small AM radio station I had from 1970 to '72 in my hometown), but I have another suggestion. How about those "big band" AM stations? I don't know where in Indiana you are, but most every big city has at least one; many such stations have wide coverage areas as well. Their music would be just perfect for listening to over any vintage radio. I keep my 1963-vintage Zenith K731 tuned to such a station in Cleveland (I live in a very small town some 35 miles from there) until the signal fades into the noise at night (it's only 5,000 watts; I swear they change their antenna signal pattern and cut their power after sundown, as I can't hear the station on any radio in my apartment except the 731 at night--that set is a DX machine if I ever saw one, even using the built-in "wavemagnet" AM antenna, getting stations up and down the East Coast and as far west as Texas and Colorado at night [after the sports station signs off for maintenance early Monday morning I often hear KOA in Denver on 850] from my location here in Ohio. This thing even brings in a 500-watt oldies station in a town about 20 miles west of here, even at night when the station cuts its power to 42 watts. Liking oldies as I do, I'm glad for that, although I can always tune in on the Internet [welw.com] as that station streams its audio over the Web).

BTW, the difference between AM and FM is the manner in which the carrier wave is modulated. AM is an abbreviation for amplitude modulation (the amplitude or level of the signal changes with audio modulation); FM is frequency modulation, where the actual frequency of the carrier changes by a certain small amount, plus or minus, with modulation. The amount of frequency swing is referred to as the deviation level.



A little about myself: I am 47 years old and an amateur radio operator, having been licensed over 30 years (got my first license in 1972 at the age of 16) and I've been an electronics bug most of my life (which actually led to my getting a ham radio license).

Had a basement full of old TVs and such back in the early '70s. Enjoyed the heck out of it while it lasted, but I moved to an apartment in late 1999 and had to scrap all those old sets. However, I do have a small collection of small radios such as my Zenith K731, an older Zenith H511 (1951), and a bunch of '70s-vintage transistor radios of various makes, not to mention reading everything I can get my hands on concerning Zenith radio, TV and other entertainment gear (I like Zenith, as you can tell from my collection), so I am staying very close to a hobby I have enjoyed for many years.

I am rebuilding my tool kit as well (all I need now is a digital multimeter and a new soldering iron; I left most of my tools back at my former home--they are long gone by now) so I can keep my vintage gear working like new. I scored a 5" Zenith NOS (new old stock) speaker on ebay the other day, which I will use to replace the speaker in my H511 Zenith (the original has a cone torn pretty much beyond repair, although it still sounds surprisingly good, as does the radio for having been made over 50 years ago).

Good luck to you and, as many others before me have said, welcome to AK. Antique/vintage radio collecting is a wonderful hobby, but, as at least one other poster has noted here, it can be addicting as all get out. Where I used to live I would pick up old TVs from my neighbors' trash, which explains why my basement there was full of old ('50s-'60s vintage) televisions of every U. S. make except Magnavox. (How the devil did I miss that one? )

Now I'm into antique radios. . . . Where will it end?
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Last edited by Jeffhs; 04-26-2004 at 03:42 PM.
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Old 04-26-2004, 03:27 PM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
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Crooner,

It;s a good thing you brought the output frequency down. The frequency your "Radio DJ" unit transmits on "out of the box" sounds as if it is far too high for many modern or vintage AM radios as well. Although all new ones (including a replica 1934 cathedral set I bought at a discount store for $20 and the AM tuner in my Aiwa bookshelf stereo) tune AM from 530-1710 KHz, most 1950s-'60s-vintage AM sets tune only to perhaps 1605 or so; of course, as you discovered, very old sets such as your Philco tune only to 1600, and some of them don't even go that high (I've seen pictures and read info on some BC sets from the 1930s that stop at 1500). I once had a Hallicrafters S19R shortwave receiver (1939) which tuned to 1700 KHz; in fact, many AC/DC table radios of late-30s vintage did also, but that extension to 1700 was for the old AM police band. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the broadcast band. The regular AM BC band was expanded to 1710 only a few short years ago and the police, of course, went first to VHF, then UHF.

BTW: I realize you have already changed the output of your Radio DJ transmitter to a lower frequency, but what follows is an FYI in case you want to receive the expanded portion of the AM BC band on your Philco. Have you tried fiddling a bit with the small padders on the sides of the Philco's tuning condenser to get the set to tune to 1710? This dodge will shift the AM band up or down the dial by a certain fixed amount, but I'd think you should be able to set the high end to 1710 with no trouble. If this doesn't shift the high end of your AM band high enough, you can try small capacitors across the tuning condenser; this will raise the high end of the tuning range enough to receive the output of your small transmitter.

If you have any new stations in your area in the expanded part of the AM BC band, you'll be able to receive those as well. I've already received several stations from Florida, including, believe it or not, one of those flea-power road and traffic information stations on the new band at night on my 1934 replica cathedral, using only the set's built-in antenna. The sensitivity and selectivity of that set isn't the best in the world; I live within two miles of a 1 kW station on 1460 that takes over most frequencies between that frequency and about 1570 on that radio--I get a daytime-only sports station on 1560 OK when it is on the air, but once it signs off, the local station on 1460 can be heard there and everywhere else up to 1570 or so. The problem is still there, though not nearly as bad, when the local station cuts its power in half, to 0.5 kW or 500 watts, at night. Doesn't bother any other radio in my apartment except a cheap clock radio on my nightstand in my bedroom (the FM selectivity of that set is absolutely blah as well), but again that's what you get with the cheapies. (Maxim: one gets what one pays for). When the local station here is running full power (1 kW), I can hear it as well at the low end of the dial, around 590 or so, on my cathedral set, and it even comes in at these oddball frequencies on the AM tuner in my bookshelf stereo (which isn't much more than a glorified crystal set; I had a Zenith four-mode stereo, with 8-track and all, in the '80s with an AM tuner which was just as bad, although, as with my bookshelf system, the FM was great). The FM tuner in my bookshelf stereo isn't Marantz or Fisher quality by any means, but with an amplified antenna I can get every major Cleveland station in stereo every bit as well here in my small town (over 40 miles from the stations) as I did when I lived in the suburbs.

Even that (the garbage programming on most Cleveland FM stations but two, not counting the NPR affiliate) doesn't bother me--any more, anyhow (though it used to for years), as I run the audio from my cable box through the stereo; the cable system here (Comcast digital) has 30 channels of CD-quality music, one of which is easy listening (do any FM stations in this country play that kind of music anymore?). I listen to that cable station when I get tired of the rock-and-roll stuff on the regular FMs from Cleveland (my stereo has an excellent audio amplifier system--240 watts, surround sound, three-way speakers including powered subwoofers--the sound is awesome, but I don't dare turn this thing up full-blast, for obvious reasons).


















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Collecting, restoring and enjoying vintage Zenith radios since 2002

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Last edited by Jeffhs; 04-26-2004 at 04:37 PM.
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