Quote:
Originally Posted by Sandy G
One of these in pretty much pristine cosmetic shape showed up on my doorstep, courtesy of the E place. It is a HUGE AM/FM SW set from 1968-69, competing w/Sony's CRF-230 or CRF-150s. Looks like its never had batteries in it, the dial light works, but it really needs to go see Dr Dewick & get all the buttons & knobs de-gunkified. It works, but the volume is VERY touchy, as is the bass/treble controls, & the bandswitches. I needed this like I needed another Whole in my Whead, but when has "Need" ever had anything to do w/it ? It could also benefit from an hour or so w/a bottle of Windex, some Q-tips & about half a roll of paper towels, along w/some self-applied Elbow Grease...It's missing the front cover & the owner's manual, but otherwise is OK. Antennas aren't bent. Overall, I'm right pleased...Right pleased indeed.-Unca Sandy
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It shouldn't be too much of a job to clean the controls yourself. Get a can of DeOxit at Radio Shack and spray the stuff into the control housings (there is almost always a hole or slot near the terminals just for this purpose). I do this routinely with every old radio I own; the controls have been whisper-quiet as a result. Shouldn't take more than a few minutes to clean all the pots and bandswitch in your radio, unless the chassis is difficult to remove from the cabinet (as is the case with my Zenith Royal 1000). In this case, I would definitely send the set to Terry DeWick. I don't know much about him other than what I've read here in AK's forums, but from that I get the feeling that he really knows his stuff when it comes to repair work. It's not limited to radio or TV, either. I understand he also does repairs on motorcycle transmissions, engines and other mechanical devices.
From reading your posts, it seems to me that Terry DeWick is not that far from you; I think he might be in Tennessee somewhere near Rogersville, so perhaps you are better off sending your radio to him for the service/repairs you mention. I'll look at his website after I finish this and make a note of exactly where he is located, just in case I have to send one of my old Zenith radios to him some day. I generally like to fix things myself if I can, but we all get stuck once in a while and need help from someone who knows more about what we try to repair.
BTW, your post reminded me that I'd better clean up the band selector on my Zenith C845. The switch works, but it is very intermittent on FM and FM-AFC so I think a good cleaning of it and the volume and tone controls is in order. One of these days...
Those huge Panasonics (yours is a National Panasonic, which is quite rare these days, even on eBay) were popular perhaps 40 years ago or more and were built very solidly, unlike the cheap plastic headphone stereos and half-boomboxes without cassette or CD players (I call them "half" boomboxes because they do not have these players--they are far too small for anything like that; I've seem these little things at Big Lots selling for $3.99 or even less) found in discount stores these days.
I'd hang on to that Panasonic radio, as they don't make them like that anymore (what I always say about antique/vintage Zenith TV and radio/stereo, but some of those older multi-band portables are built just as solidly; I have a Zenith R-70 AM/FM portable, 11 transistors, 1980 vintage, that is built on a PC board but is built like a tank, and works just as well). National Panasonic is even more of a rarity than plain Panasonic; I don't know just how many National Pana's were made, or where the "National" came from. I am an amateur radio operator and am familiar with the old National Radio Corporation, which made ham radio equipment (my dad had a World War II surplus National RAO-7 receiver for years), but how or when the National brand ever became associated with Panasonic is beyond me.