Nice to see you are making some progress with this incredible radio. I wish I could answer your question on substitution but can't. Maybe someone on the Tube audio subforum could?

Well, at this point I am more or less finished. I spent about 4 hours polishing up the gold trim around the front of the stereo. It looks gorgeous now! The Telefunken logo just gleams. For those curious as to what I used - I actually tried a few things. The trim was badly tarnished and looked a dull brown. Rubbing alone was getting me no where. I found an old "polish cloth" in the basement and tried using that. It worked well and soon the gold color started to shine through. But the work went VERY slow - I managed to polish a small 2 inch section in about an hour of rubbing. At that rate I would be polishing to the next day and still not be finished. Not to mention have some not-so-fun pain in my hands. So I tried something a bit more aggressive. I mixed some "bar keepers friend" scrubbing powder (google it) with a bit of water to make a nice paste. I applied a bit of that to some paper towel and rubbed. This managed to remove the tarnish and shine up the rest of the trim in about an hour, without scratching mind you. I then made another quick pass with the polish cloth to bring out the luster, and finally used a rag to buff it to a nice shine. I still have yet to polish the knobs (cough), but once thats done, it should look amazing.

I went ahead and installed the non-electrolytic. Tested it and it seems to work/sound just fine so I left it there.

Then I turned it over and installed one more cap by the crossover section - a 1000pf @ 1000v paper cap which I replaced with a mica unit. Mica was the only one I was able to find in that high a voltage. However, after testing, it seems changing that out made the sound somewhat worse. Before the bass was very punchy, but now it seems a little garbled and strained. Its difficult to put into words but i'm almost positive it doesn't sound as good as before. I'd almost put the old cap back but its paper and in terrible shape. Is this kind of cap not a good idea to use in crossover or am I doing something else wrong?

Wow, its been a long time since i've touched this thread. I actually finished my restore back in February, but I haven't gotten around to taking any pictures until now. Well, here she is...

http://members.bellatlantic.net/~doa/0896s.jpg


http://members.bellatlantic.net/~doa/0898s.jpg
Ignore the date on the camera... I never bothered to update it after putting new batteries in.

I'm very glad the way it turned out, although honestly, it was in almost perfect condition to begin with. All I had to do was give the chrome a good polish and the rest a nice cleaning.

The overall sound is very good. Not perfect, but good. I am sure that audio on FM is still slightly messed up. Even tuned in, I can still hear some garble/static on stations, so it might need to be retuned. I dare not try that though. AM and SW performance is perfect though. Overall i'm happy, and I listen to her almost daily.

I know we spoke a while ago about the radio.

It looks great.

Did you replace the caps in the enclosure holding the EABC80 tube.? If you didn't be very carefull if you try it!! The coils are very fragile and there are some hair thin wires in the enclosure.

Jon

When you say hot do you mean the plate is glowing red? If so the coupling caps NEED to be replaced. Do not operate it like this for any length of time as the tubes are quickly going to be ruined,. EL84s do run hot normally, and probably much hotter than the RF tubes in the set but should never run with red plates.

I had a Heathkit amplifier with push-pull EL84 outputs where one output tube ran hot after a few minutes of operation. The cathode bias voltage was going down. Removing the electrolytic across the cathode bias resistor eliminated the problem.

You SURE you really wanna keep that junky ol' Kraut thing ? I mean, I got a bran-spankin NEW Ichipusy KRP-1000X AM/FM/SW that is made from genuine Black Plastic that I'll GUARANTEE will pull in Uranus on a clear day...And sound good doin' it...I'll trade you even, FAIR 'n' SQUARE, for this refugee from the Cold War...The KRP-1000X, being those new "miracle" technology, transistors, NEVER gets hot...Unless you leave it out in the sun, in which case it transforms itself into Moderne Art. You'll NOT hafta worry about some dumb ol' tooob gettin' to hot, or the bass sounding like grandpa clearin' his throat...Whaddya say ? (grin) (Serious note- I LOVE yr set !! It is Gorgeous !!)

That will work fine, maybe better than an actual electrolytic. It won't dry out like a lytic can can.

No I didn't bother to go in there at all. I would have had to disconnect a ton of wires to get into the enclosure and honestly I didn't have it in me.

When I say hot, I don't mean the plates are glowing. I just mean the tube is physically very hot. Most of the tubes I can actually touch and hold for a few seconds without burning myself. But one of the EL84's is more like a 60w lightbulb after its been on for a while - you can't touch it without burning your fingers. Everything seems to be running well so I assume its ok. I'm sure there are some resistors that are out of spec but replacing them would be such a chore.

I'm gelaous on you, U.S.A. guys. The tube radios made in West Germany for U.S.A. market had all F.M. band (88-108 M.Hz.), whyle the one ones made for Europe had F.M. only on 88-100 M.Hz., and some, later on 88-104 M.Hz; and in Bucharest 2 of the stations that sometimes I listen much are on 106.7 and 107.3. I had an "Grunding" radio made for U.S.A. market ... but it wasn't sounding to good (bad caps I think), and it broke, and stupid me just salled it... now I regret that I did that, becuase it'll be very hard to find an full range F.M. radio with electronic tubes (valves)... probably I'll by one from U.S.A. when I'll have the money (one that will be stereo with 4 speakers - the front speakers to have the same size, and the 2 side one to have the same size between them to and to have the stereo decoder installed).