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I just want to make a philosophical observation. I am an old guy and these radios were current models to me. I looked at them with disdain even then, thinking how cheaply can something be made and still have it work. The workmanship, design, and component quality was of the lowest order, and the hot chassis exacerbated that.
I repaired many of them, and it was nearly impossible to repair without creating a sort of upgrade, since after market parts were usually better than OEM.
I realize this is a hobby, but prolonging the life of what I had considered a piece of junk seems to be contrary to common sense.
Yes, it's fun, and that alone justifies it. When I see one, my virtual hands reach out to pick at it and savor the delights of my childhood. I want to rock the tubes in their sockets, spray hazardous substances into the controls, push parts around to search for potential shorts or broken solder joints, etc. And of course clean the dial and recalibrate and realign the unit. The speaker probably is raspy from the cone warping over the years. The knobs push on with springs rather than set screws. And a host of other economy measures were used.
I wonder what of today's gear will be thought of in this way, one day.
On the opposite end of the scale, I recently acquired a Hewlett Packard signal generator, model 606. It's a 19 tube behemoth that weighs enough to give even a strong man a hernia, trying to lift it. Overdesign is evident everywhere, with buffer stages to reduce FM when only AM is desired, a hand calibrated dial, and about 120 dB of dynamic range with a meter that is amazingly accurate.
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