A member poll: do TV collectors find radios boring?

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

I started with radios (I accumulated all sorts of things some accidentally some as passing fancies) as my first serious, continuous, lasting hobby and still like to collect and restore radios. Yeah, some do bore me....How many AA5s can you restore till you start to be able to smash a few and build a new one from the remains on memory of the schematic/start sleep-restoring them. But for every cookie cutter AA5 there is an AA5 with a cool enough cabinet to merit doing the trained-monkey-ready restore or a non-AA5 with some clever or unorthodox circuit that really feeds my inner tube-gear-nerd....Case in point I just restored a Silvertone model 1954 tombstone that uses a combination of Fat-pin tubes and WEIRD early metal shell octals, and as a cherry on top the volume control is a pair of coils that are mechanically moved in relation to each other to control the volume (I really need to see the schematic to sate my curiosity).

Radios did start to loose challenge and mystery to me, which is when I got into TVs, and those gave me all I could ask for and more for a while. I'm better and don't get as much challenge now, but TVs by nature make you keep using your head for repairs.

I'm starting to get to the point of scratch building things (like audio equipment) now. It used to be I lacked the math and understanding to make much of anything that worked or was useful, and preferred to fix equipment with good designs and tech info, but now that I can design from scratch that can be fun too (though sometimes frustrating).

You have one of those things as well!
The main reason, I bought it was the novel volume control circuit. Most of the tubes were missing and the cabinet is missing some veneer. I did get it going, but it needs restoring and Aligning.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

You have one of those things as well!
The main reason, I bought it was the novel volume control circuit. Most of the tubes were missing and the cabinet is missing some veneer. I did get it going, but it needs restoring and Aligning.

I got it for $45 at the last WARCI meet. Mine is near perfect see pic, and has seemingly all it's original tubes*. Some of which are REAL odd early shouldered envelope metal types the likes of which I'd never seen before. I bought it because in the early years a console with the same dial (which I like the look of) slipped through my fingers, and this was a chance to have "the one that got away" in a nicer package.

*So when I found a P-K short in the 84 (proto 6X5) rectifier I got creative, and added diodes under chassis, cut the tips off the P and K pins and slipped spaghetti between the envelope through leads and the inside of the hollow pins...The heater is still connected, original tube in socket looking correct from topside, but no more pesky P-K short.

DSCN1992 by Tom Carlson, on Flickr

[Dave S]

I clicked on the button for "love 'em equally" but that's not quite accurate. I started with old radios as a kid. And as you can see from my web-gallery in the link in my signature below, I like most anything electronic that makes noise: radios, TVs, phonographs, juke boxes and more. I have a collector sports car too.

But although I have a more-than-casual interest in all that, my primary thing is vintage television. I've been focused mainly on TV history and TV collecting after a friend gave me a set he found in his attic 30-some years ago.