Wanamaker radio
 

Just picked this little guy up today, but can not find any info on it. Possibly made by Rees-Mace????? Or Pye???? Anybody got one of these or know any info?

I THINK Wanamaker's was one of the big Philly dept. stores WAY back yonder...They must have had 'em made as a "Private Label" brand. IIRC, they even had their own store radio station. I THINK I remember reading this somewhere...

From what I read, they did have their own station. Rees-Mace from London UK did make radios for Wanamaker. I could not find any other manufacturer that supplied them radios. All I know is it's a model 55. Manufacturer unknown.

I started with this little guy, the tubes are a 43, 25z5, two 77's, and a 78.
The power cord was cut at some point. What puzzles me is a few things. First it seems like the power cord wires connect to pins 5 and 6 on the 25z5.
The volume control is a combo with the power switch. one side of the switch goes directly to the chassis, and the other wire leads over to the 25z5, but is cut. If you look at the first pic, the leads sticking out from the chassis is what I think was the power cord. There is a screwdriver head pointing to the wire that goes to the power switch. The 2nd pic is a shot of the power switch, screwdriver pointing to the wire in question.
I can not find any info on this radio at all. No schematic, no nothing. Any ideas from anyone???

If there's no power resistor to drop the powerline voltage to the heater string, this radio may have used a "curtain burner" power cord, one with resistance wire to drop the voltage. This cord would get warm. And probably decayed so bad that it was cut off.

Whats the procedure to use a standard cord?
I'm pretty sure 120 v to that tube would not be good :nono:

Add up the tube heater voltages and subtract from 120 to see how much voltage you need to drop. There are several ways to drop the voltage but the one I like the best is to use non polarized capacitors. They make no heat like a resistor would. Also they give the tubes a soft start, coming up to full voltage across the string after about 20 seconds. The way to calculate the size is below. Scroll down to the capacitive dropper section. Sometimes you can find them on places like Electronic Goldmine, but they can also be ordered from Mouser, etc.

http://www.vintage-radio.com/repair-...per-calcs.html

It's a lot easier to just put a resistor in. Nothing wrong with the capacitor approach but it does take some calculating and space and money.

Make sure you only put it in series with the heaters, not the entire set. Those resistance line cords had three leads, two were the power and one the resistor.

Three leads is what appears to be there, but like I said earlier, one line goes directly to the power switch, and out the other side of the switch goes directly to the chassis...dead short???? Or am I missing something??

How about a 2 amp. diode and a 120 ohm 15 watt resistor or a 170 ohm 20 watt resistor in series with the heaters.

Dug this back out to finish it. Reese was so kind in looking at this set and determined that a 200 ohm 25 or 50 watt resistor is needed.
First thing is the chassis is going to need a trip to the cabinet blaster. I have to remove the speaker and that is going to need a re-cone.

Do you re-cone yourself, or do you have it done if so I would love to have the link for my bookmarks.

I recone my own always. I usually buy the cones pre made. Although on this one I'm having problems finding one that will fit. I may need to make one from scratch.

In my entry #10, from way back when, I was really mistaken about using a capacitance-reactance dropper. AFAIC, there is nothing like it!
I redid two, somewhat worthless small radio chassis and used this proceedure, just to see how well it worked. I used the caps from scrap ceiling fans. Many of them are double caps, for the speed selection.
You set is a non-avc, autodyne convertor, using a power detector. The volume is controlled by attenuating the incoming signal, so a lot of times, you had to turn the volume to max, to receive a distant station. I calculated the cap you need is a 8mfd @ 250 volts, non polarized AC type capacitor. :thmbsp:

I'm going to try the resistor since I already have it. I did a google search on this radio and found one other example at http://americanradios.perso.sfr.fr/Gallery.htm
He has a footnote about if anybody has any info on it, to email him. I sent him a email telling him what I know. So this seems like a scarce set.
I'm trying to get a rough date on this thing. By the type of tubes in it, I'm guessing 30's????

Here it is after the cabinet blaster. All I had on hand was black, so black it is. Now onto the speaker next.

It's around a 1933-34 radio. The penta-grid converter tube came out around mid-1934. 6A7 and it's varients.
IIRC, the resistance line cord on these sets was a 160 ohm and dissipated 20 watts, over its length. Modern 120 volt mains require around 175 ohms.
If you're planning on using a 100 ohm dropping resistor, it's not enough drop. 100 ohm resistor will only drop 30 volts, you need a 51 volt drop.
Those tubes are getting harder to get. You don't want to over voltage them.

I looked up the latest patent number on the speaker, that was 1932 so your spot on there.
I searched for a cone for the speaker, could not find any with the correct depth. So I had to make one from scratch.
Next I got a few paper caps to replace and find a 25z5 in my tube stash.

Ok while I was finishing replacing the paper caps, I spotted a date on the inside of the chassis, stamped in black ink, April 15 1935. So I assume thats when it was built.
Now I have a question, on the 25z5, no pins are marked, socket is not marked either. Looking underneath, do they go counter- clockwise? And how can I tell which is pin 1?

The socket, viewed from the bottom, are clockwise numbered. The old UX base tubes, the thicker pins are number 1&6, for the 6 pin tubes. the 5 pin tubes don't have thicker pins, the 4,6 and 7 pin tubes do. The thicker pins are the heater or filament pins, depending on the tube number. The thick pin on the left would be pin number 1.

A update on this little set. I had to buy a 25z5 because I didn't have any. They came Monday. Got a chassis mount resistor with the aluminum housing from Moyers, I was in the area and stopped there.
Powered it up, just got some hum from the speaker. Took a closer look and saw one of the coils did not look right. Sure enough the surface was chewed up and it tested open. Luckily I got a slew of these carron repair coils.
So if need be I had one. Instead I decides to try to salvage it. Took off a few wraps. Reattached and tested, tested ok.
So I try it again. Got to one spot on the dial that sounded like it could be something. Started to adjust the one coil on the back and all of a sudden I heard something like jesus will save you! LOL. Found a station:banana: but it was off freq. because it sounded like sideband. Somebody had messed with the tuning pads on the tuner, because one was backed almost all the way out. So for now I set it by ear. I would like to do a alignment but I do not have a schematic or waveform pics and instructions to do such a alignment. I know one 77 tube is real iffy so I got 2 new ones coming.

I got the 2 NOS military 77 tubes today. Put them in and their was a difference. I did a general alignment on the set. Can pick up several stations across the band and it does not sound too bad. I consider this chassis done!:banana:
All thats left is grillcloth and 2 knobs.

Just keep in mind a resistor for a set like this will put out a lot of heat. Theres a reason they put it in the cord, to keep the heat out of the cabinet. I fixed a resistor cord set where I used a metal electrical box, with a 3 wire cord connecting to the set. Put the resistor in the outlet box. if I ever do that again, Ill do it one better by putting a isolation trans or GFCI in the box. I havnt tried the capacior Idea yet, but it would solve the heat issue.

I used a aluminum bodied 50 watt resistor, which is riveted to the inside of the chassis, so the chassis sorta is a heat sink. I don't plan on using this radio much anyway. May just run it a half hour every few months. Some of the ones I got have not been turned on in 2 years or more.

Thats probaby fine... But its not a radio you would want to run all day.

You could use a rectifier diode (without any filter cap) in the heater string. You just need the heater string to add up to about 83V. (2x50V) + (3x6.3V) = 69V, so you need s resistor to burn off another 14V worth (47 ohms 10 watts more than enough wattage), then the diode. Less heat. Put the diode's anode on the 120V source, and its cathode on the above resistor.

Why 83V? Power (watts) is voltage squared over resistance. The diode will half the power off AC. The heater string wants 24 watts, using a resistor will burn an extra 12 watts. The heater string looks like a 277 ohm resistor, and if we put the powerline direct on that, we'd get 51 watts, about twice what we want, so we cut that in half by using the diode. With the 47 ohm resistor, we waste only 4.2 watts vs 15 watts with an unrectified resistor.
That's a lot less heat. Only downside is you're using technology that didn't exist when the radio was made (well, maybe selenium rectifiers were around).

The main reason for the resistive voltage drop was for economy and the radio was built to be used on DC mains, common at the time, in the older areas of the large cities. :scratch2:

Look what I found, this sets brother! All intact and original. Now I got 2:yes: