Freed-Eisemann Educator
 

A friend and I visited a local ham last night who was downsizing his collection.

Here's what I came home with. It's all a bit rough, but who am I to complain - it was free :)

Atwater Kent 944
Motorola 14P3
Eico 324
Mayfair tape recorder
Freed-Eisemann Educator

I thought the Educator was a modified guitar amp at first. From what little I can find online, they were used in schools.

Does anyone know more about them ?
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7178/7...c4de5802_z.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7062/6...f8210772_z.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7265/7...82eb11a7_z.jpg

I think we may have had a radio like that at my high school circa 1960. Seems to me we used it to listen to WBEZ in one class.

Neat !

From what I can see peeking in the back, it has a pretty hefty speaker. Once I get all the dust, dirt and cat hair cleaned out, I'll bring it inside for a closer look.

Hey! Take it easy on the cats. It might be dog hair. You didn't mention the Admiral table radio. I used to refer to them as the "garage door".:D

Don't get me wrong, I like cats :yes: He had 6 or so real beauties roaming around his place http://www.jawaspot.com/smilies/cute/kitty1.gif

You're right, I forgot all about the Admiral. Cheap little AA5, but it is in good condition.

I used to have an Admiral AA5 that was a modern set in that it was on a circuit board. At the time there was skepticism about circuit boards so Admiral put a guarantee on the board. The guarantee said they would replace the board free should anything go wrong with it. The fine print said that the guarantee did not include any of the components mounted on the board.

Now there was a truly useful guarantee. Admiral was ahead of its time I guess.

LOL - nice. Now, I'm curious to pop open the Admiral 5R37 radio and see what's inside.

I just went out to the garage and took a closer look at the "Educator". It turns out there's actually a really solid looking radio inside that beat up cabinet.

It's a model CH 155A according to the label. No service info anywhere online that I can find.
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5333/7...8e2ff9ff_b.jpg

The tube lineup reminds me of a late 40s design, but I think it's from the mid 50s. The 6U5 eye tube is a nice touch.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7120/7...38df2683_b.jpg

Nice Jensen "extended range" speaker.
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5332/7...025ef959_z.jpg

Looks like the 6L6 is a little "spent". Must be a bad coupling capacitor. Also, I see a 5Y3, instead of a 5U4, as shown on the location diagram. Tuned RF on the AM and FM.

What a hunky radio and speaker. I'll bet it will sound good. This must be from the last gasp days of Freed-Eisemann. That case could be stripped and recovered with Tolex the way they do with Transoceanics. At least with the dearth of grille cloth these days there is still available plenty of cloth for guitar speakers, which would not look bad with Tolex.

Must be one of the last field-coil speakers produced. Any ideas?

P.S.: is it a FC or PM, I'm not so sure...

Hmm. I'll have to take a closer look. It kinda looks like it's both FC and PM ?

The label clearly reads 'FIELD COIL SPEAKER', something I had not noticed earlier.
So my comment was justified...

Ah-ha, so it does. I guess that thick loop of iron isn't magnetized.

I had an Admiral radio exactly like that. My first experience with the bad mica capacitors formed into the IF can bases. Bought a new IF can for it by Miller, back when you could walk into the jobber and buy stuff, you know.:tears:

Gonna be a LOT of work, but that Bad Boi will look AWW-SUM-to use the Young Peoples' favorite exclamation- when you get it spiffed up. I'd do a good cleaning, maybe some corrective surgery, a couple of coats of black shoe polish before I ordered up any Tolex.

That could be an interesting project. I've never worked with Tolex before.

Yeah, if they're bad, I'll have to attempt a repair. I bet it has the mica caps that are riveted to the base and exposed to the air :(

We'll see. I'm going to head out later and peel off that electrical tape.

I pulled the chassis out tonight. That is indeed a 5Y3 in the 5U4 socket.

http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5032/7...bb491687_b.jpg

It seems service info is non-existent so I'll have to wing it. My only concern so far is the unmarked candohm resistor in the lower right. I'll try to measure it's value before attempting a power up in case it burns out.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7182/7...3e582935_b.jpg

The cabinet is definitely going to need some work.
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5450/6...c3ba4d75_z.jpg

Tolex is easy to work with-since your original covering doesn't seem to have shrunken up much, you can just peel it off and make a pattern from that. The Tolex cement is a type of contact cement, so your experiences in applying veneer will come in handy here. As a bonus, the black stag pattern that I ordered is a great replacement for the leatherette decoration missing on some of my old cameras.

Thanks for the great suggestion!

While I wait for paint to dry on my Brunswick 5KR, I took a whack at this set. A fellow collector kindly sent me a scanned schematic.

Another collector sent me this note
First, I pulled the 5U4 rectifier and fired it up. All the tubes lit up and I have ~700VAC on the secondary :)
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7277/7...41f3abda_z.jpg

Next, I'll replace the three electrolytics and all the paper caps.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7215/6...728146d0_z.jpg

Here's a nasty cap going right from the AC line to ground. I'll replace it with a Y type safety cap.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7244/6...d0e63a47_z.jpg

I finished the recap, and it's playing nicely :music: No surprises this time :)
The FM is especially nice. Just using the power cord as an antenna, pulls in plenty of stations.
http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5238/7...59e62af6_b.jpg

The eye tube is a nice touch :yes:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7130/7...ac3bdf33_z.jpg http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5279/7...0c0e7187_z.jpg

I had one of those "Freed-Eisemann Educator's", I paid 10$ for it and it was
in decent shape.I sold it 3 years ago..Now I have to search my back up drives
to find a picture of it to post

Found it !

http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/f...66/freed01.jpg
http://i242.photobucket.com/albums/f...66/freed03.jpg

Thanks for the great photos. I hope I can get my cabinet looking as nice.

Oh-oh - it's for "classroom use only". :D

Very cool set, I'd never seen one before.

What's the candohm resistor in the corner used for? Output tube cathod bias? It seems like they used parts that were laying around. The radio appears to be built in the late 40's, early 50's. Looking at all those old Solar capacitors. I didn't think they made them that late.

Those "Majic Eyes" were just Kewl as all get-out... Even better when they actually WORK...

Yes, it's the cathode bias for the 6L6 output tube.