[vortalexfan]

I had acquired late last year, more or less the sister set to this radio the RCA 5T and that thing when I first acquired, would blow the breaker for the circuit my workshop was on in my house, (and he told me that's all it did for him as well, and that was why he was selling it).

It was because the previous owner of the set a fellow antique radio enthusiast/collector had at one point replaced the original cloth cord with a modern lamp cord but he didn't wire it up right, which was why it was blowing the breaker, and it took me a few months of studying the Rider's Manual and the old RCA Red Book service diagrams for this radio to figure out that the wiring diagrams for the switch on this radio on those manuals (or at least the Rider's anyways) were written incorrectly and had the "dummy terminal" on the Power Switch marked in the wrong spot which is I think why the previous owner had issues with the wiring of the RCA 5T I am currently writting about.

Anyways the RCA 5T I just got going is a great performing set, its super sensitive and selective and the SW band on it picks up stations like its nobody's business (I was picking up the WWVB time stamp signal @ 5 MHz, I was picking up many Religious Stations on the SW band, and I was even picking up Radio Havanna out of Havanna, Cuba on it!

Anyways my point is that some of these old radios are super easy to repair and troubleshoot and some of these radios are a pain to troubleshoot even using the best troubleshooting skills one has to offer.

Actually calling the RCA 5T the "sister radio" to the GE A-53 is kind of inaccurate because the 5T is a vastly superior radio to the GE A-53 in many ways including the fact that the 5T has a great performing AVC circuit, whereas the GE A-53 lacks any sort of proper AVC circuit.