Just bought an Unknown Model Philco Tombstone
 

Hello everyone, tonight I just bought locally from Facebook Marketplace an unknown model Philco Multiband Tombtone radio that the cabinet is in pretty decent shape yet (although the finish could use a refresh with some Howard's Restore-A-Finish), that electrically is in unknown condition (although the owner claims it works as is, but I'm not going to trust someone's arbitrary opinion on the working condition of an 80+ year old Tombstone radio), it also appears to have Philco's famous "Shadow Meter" Tuning Meter, which I've always wanted one of those types of Philco radios but could never find one at a resonable price (they were usually at antique malls and where in unknown electrical condition and they usually wanted over $100 for them even though they were in unknown working working condition).

I'm going to be picking the radio up tomorrow afternoon, and I will be paying $75 for the radio.

I'm just curious as to whether or not anyone on here knows the model of the radio and whether or not I scored on this radio or not.

I'm planning on doing a complete electrical restore/alignment of the radio and refreshment of the cabinet's original finish.

Pictures of the radio in question posted below.

UPDATE: OK so after a little research and looking through pictures on the Philco Phorum's Philco Radio Gallery, I have figured out that the radio I've bought is a 1936 Philco Model 116B Multiband "Baby Grand" Tombstone Radio with a Shadow Meter Tuning Meter built-in (which on the one I'm getting, the dial bezel/glass is on upside down as the shadow meter lense is facing down instead of up like its supposed to).

Any information on this radio besides what they have at the Philco Phorum (which is not much information)?

Sure looks like it. I have one but with the console chassis. This was the last of an era. 11 tubes using a standard type chassis layout. 10 watts of push-pull output power. Probably the best radio of it's type ever made! With a good antenna, this radio outperforms any other radio in it's class. Included was long-wave reception (marked weather). Mine is undergoing updating and clean-up. My cabinet was already refinished. It's BIG and HEAVY. There will never be another made like it!

Sweet, it sounds like I scored a good unit. :thmbsp::D

I just recently finished the chassis restoration on mine and it is a very good performer.

Gregb

Nice find! Im never scared getting a Philco as advice is easily obtained if needed.

I enjoy radios made in 1936. By then they had improved the parts a lot and caps had gotten smaller but had not started adding crap that wasnt needed. The year (1936) varies by make of course but it seems to mostly hold true. By 1940 they were getting crazy with push buttons and moved away from tombstone designs. Always modernizing them to compete with styles but often harder to work on. Thats just my opinion of course. That and $1 will get you a can of Pepsi.

It is pretty rare to find a tombstone or cathedral that isn't missing pieces, painted a stupid color, or experiencing cabinet rot for under a C-note here.

You have the last of that sets kind and I have the first of it's kind...a Philco 16B with some significant cabinet issues that I need to get to before I bother with the chassis.

Well mine seems to be all there except the original tube placement chart is missing from inside the cabinet, and it also seems to be missing 3 tube shields, also it seems like the power switch was bypassed on this radio at one point in time as the radio just powers on when the radio is plugged into the wall even with the power switch/volume control knob turned to the off position, and when you turn the power switch on it doesn't do anything with the radio, which is weird.

Also I need some information on how to repair the shadow meter, and also how to properly deal with the bakelite capacitor blocks as far as restuffing them with modern caps goes.

Has the same dial window/escutcheon as my Model 624, Def a '36 model.

One way to deal with the Bakelite blocks is to heat up the tar to soften it and either gouge it out with a screwdriver, or you can sometimes push it out from the top (thru one of the little solder eyelets) with a small screwdriver.

There are internet articles on repairing the shadow meter. There are people who repair this for a reasonable fee. Lastly, occasionally you can find parts on ebay. Getting the meter situated on your radio maybe difficult but not impossible: I found one for my "rare" 37-665B which I'm using now.

Well i just tested out the radio and the tuner is completely dead, no signals being pulled in whatsoever on any of the bands, not even on the broadcast (AM) band, and it seems I may need a replacement volume control/power switch because my power switch is stuck in the on position for some reason, and I can't seem to get it to work properly, and I don't know where I would source a replacement switch for this thing.

I have no doubt that you will be able to get this Bad Boi singing sweetly....

Thanks for the encouraging words, I do hope to get this radio up and running, because this would be the highlight of my collection. :thmbsp::music:

You're lucky. I'm really a mean, old, nasty Sumbich who rarely has a nice, kind thought for anybody...

I guess that's what your signature on the bottom of your posts refers to?

Anyways I doubt you're that bad, most of the posts I've seen from you seem more sarcastic than mean spirited, at least to me anyways.

A little update, I did manage to get it to pull in some AM Stations but they were very quiet, the volume control had to be turned up full blast to even hear anything almost as if there was something wrong with the audio section.

I know I need to definitely replace all of the capacitors in this radio including the bakelite blocks but i just wanted to see if I could get it to do anything as it was without changing anything out to get kind of a baseline of how this thing was performing to see how much work this thing was going to need besides the capacitors needing changed.

Which its looking like its going to need a complete overhaul beyond the capacitors being changed, its going to also need a complete realignment, and the speaker is going to need repair (it has a couple of minor tears in it), I'm going to need to replace the grille cloth (someone destroyed the original grille cloth at some point in time and replaced it with an old cut up pillow case) which I do have some extra grille cloth left over from when I redid my old U. S. Gloritone Cathedral Radio that is just the right amount to redo the grille cloth on this radio with.

I'm also going to need to refinish the cabinet on this thing as well as the original finish is looking a little tired on this thing.
Which I'm going to try a new refinishing technique I learned on a youtube video of an older lady that restores old radios including the cabinets, where basically you take lacquer thinner and rub it over the original finish to reblend the finish (this is especially effective if the original finish has crazed over the years or had minor water, heat or sun damage).
Then put a couple coats of stain ontop of it with some light sanding with 220 grit sandpaper in between coats and then a coat of lacquer or polyeurathane to finish it off.

Your cabinet will need more work than you think. Doing it right means eye-balling the wood first. Remember this thing is over 80 years old! Please don't do this half-way. After you're gone somebody will end up with what you did now. I'm leaving my radios as a legacy. They appreciate unlike "funny money"!

The method of refinishing I described isn't doing it half-assed, I can link you to the video that I learned that from and that person that did that wasn't half-assing anything. It actually turned out really nicely and it still kept the original finish intact yet for the most part.

And I never do things half-way when I do them, you saw my cathedral radio when I was done with It and how well it turned out.

Apparently Philco used 16B on two different Radios judging by the thread you found.
This is my model: .http://www.tuberadioland.com/philco1...tone_main.html

Personally don't like to encourage using polyurethane since stripping products usually don't work on it and you have to sand it off (which can mean sanding through veneer)... If you don't dent or break the wood with lacquer you can avoid sanding and if you never sand you never wear through the veneer which means owners in the future can refinish it the same way as many times as as needed in future centuries. Lacquer is the original and correct material and IMO the most maintainable option.

The block caps are fairly easy to rebuild and there are resources online that allow you to look up the caps and resistors contained along with pinout. I can chip most of the tar out (don't need it squeaky clean and also don't need to refill the block with tar since nobody will see it) along with the old cap foil roll out in under a minute with a screwdriver. Then it is easy to hide a new cap in the block and have the recaped chassis look bone stock. Some of theses philcos go from dead or near dead to perfect with just the block caps changed (definitely do the filters too for safety).

The only reason why I would use polyeurathane on these is because my mom suggested it because she said laquer is much nastier to use and harder to get off you if you get it on yourself and is also much nastier smelling.
but I will try to see if I can use some laquer on this unit when I'm redoing the cabinet on it.

what kind of laquer do you suggest I use?

And obviously I won't be able to get to refinishing the cabinet on this radio until the spring because its almost winter and the temperatures outside aren't conducive to varnishing.

I've tried a few different brands of clear lacquer and found most perform about the same. I'm currently using krylon from AutoZone because I bought more than I needed during fall auto body work on my truck and felt like using it up.

If you want to use toner lacquer to color it instead of stain (which is the factory method on most sets of the 30s-60s) woodcraft stocks touch up solutions toner lacquer, which I've been using ...I hear mohawk makes a good product too, but you have to buy online (which I may do eventually).

Woodworker's Supply also stocks Belhen toning lacquers if you have one of those near by. I finished stripping my 624 back in September and peeled off the bad strip of veneer. I still have to get some really thin raw mahogany veneer for mine.

I have a big air compressor so I might try my hand at using an HVLP sprayer. Rattle can nitrocellulose gets expensive if you do a lot of coats.

The cabinet on mine seems to be just one color (It doesn't have the fancy two tone finish like some 116s had) so mine should be fairly simple to refinish, as it's just walnut all throughout the cabinet and that's it, no fancy dark toning to the face trim on the front.

From what I've seen the cabinets are all two-toned. I know mine is.

Well mine has its original finish on it from what I can see and mine shows no signs of ever having the dark toning around the front trim.

When I get back home I'll take a picture of the cabinet so you can see what I mean.

Actually I stand corrected, I was taking a closer look at the cabinet and I could see what looked like the remains of some dark colored wood toner on the front trim pieces so it looks like possibly someone maybe in the 1950s or so might of refinished the cabinet (and did it very poorly might I add) to lighten up the cabinet so that it wasn't so dark and severe looking but the dark colored stripes in the middle of the radio face was actually ebony wood inlays which would explain why that part is still intact but not the rest of it.

the cabinet being refinished might actually explain why the tuning dial bezel was on upside down, and also when the radio was refinished the person who refinished it didn't bother with a clear coat (laquer or poly) which will make it a lot easier to refinish this cabinet properly.

Also I will need to get a hold of a new Philco label for the top of the front of the cabinet as the original is almost completely gone unfortunately.
But there is enough of it left on there that I can tell it was the silver colored label rather than the gold colored one.

Well I've made some progress with this radio, I've got most of the exposed paper caps replaced, except for 3 of them, of which one of them was an oddball value cap that was rated at .00125 MFD, and the other one which was a .05 MFD with a 300 Ohm Wirewound resistor in paralell with it which I'm leaving alone and then a .10 MFD 600 VDC Capacitor that was added later on by a repairman that was tied into one of the bakelite caps.

I also figured out my low volume issue with the audio on my radio, someone at some point in time subbed out the 37 tube with an 84/6Z4 rectifier tube, which I'm not sure how someone would of thought that using a full wave rectifier tube in place of a triode tube would of ever worked especially in a AVC/Detector circuit...:scratch2::thumbsdn::nono:

If the triode was being used purely as a detector a diode with the right pinout will work....I had an Admiral with a type 76 triode detector that sometime in the 50s someone replaced the tube with a 5 pin base with a 1N34 soldered into the base....It worked fine like that and probably saved someone a week waiting for a tube to ship in.

Then again I've also seen dummies assume if the tube plugs in that it has to work... I forget the name but I had a 20s console that the owner who is a collector decided to plug a pair of type 80s into the output triode sockets.... and he wondered why it hummed so loud you could hear it down the block!...it used an odd ball triode type that was unobtainable so after consulting some datasheets I found IIRC the 6S4 was close enough (main difference was slightly better gain) and built plug in adapters for those. That set had GREAT volume after that. That set had a reputation for having powerful audio for a 20s set, but the guy that gave it to me (and later began to miss it and bought it back) who had a working table model version was even impressed with how loud and clear it ran.

the 37 tube and the 84/6Z4 tube aren't even close to having the same pinout plus the 84 tube is a Full-Wave Rectifier Tube, whereas the 37 is a triode tube that was being used as a dectector and an AVC Diode so they cannot be used in place of each other.

I just think in the case of this radio it was someone who didn't know what they were doing just grabbed a tube that had the same pin arrangement(but wasn't the same pinout) and just stuck it in the radio and when the radio still wasn't working right just retired it to their attic because they didn't want to take it to a repair shop to have it repaired properly.

Look up the data sheets for the 37 and the 84 tube and you'll quickly see that the 84 would never be a suitable substitute for a 37 tube, completely different operating characteristics from each other.