Old "Patient"--revisited...

[Old1625]

This is a Stromberg-Carlson I restored for a co-worker in a music store where I was employed as a tech back in 1980. I continued to work in that store until the late '90s. My co-worker--a salesman on the sheet music and electronic organ floor--operated that radio after its restoration for the 15 years he remained in employment there. The radio played WUHN in Pittsfield, MA, and gave value to the efforts of Bing Crosby, Nat "King" Cole, Glen Miller, Gogi Grant....to name a few... It played from 9AM to 5:30PM 6 days a week--and extra hours into the night on Thursdays. It called for a replacement of a #80 rectifier tube every few years, but otherwise did its job faithfully and well.

The floor salesman/owner of old radio retired to FL, and left radio with me, as he was sure he would not have the space for it in the place he had found in amongst the palms.

The radio resided in my dining room for a long while, and scared the shit out of my niece and nephew when as young kids they saw fit to open the doors of the cabinet and play with the knobs... They were obviously not of the era where it was understood that tubes took time to warm up. They recognised it as a radio, but thought it dead when it issued no immediate response when they cranked the volume and tone knobs up full. They ran from the room screaming when the old brute roared to life suddenly with a lively account of the misbehaviors of the Boston Red Sox.

A couple of years ago one Christmas I decided that the radio would look more fitting in the music room of my younger brother's Victorian house than it did in the dining room of my 1790s vintage place, and brought it along and installed it while mom prepared a turkey feast in my brother's rather enigmatic kitchen.

Little bro plugs it in, and fires it up fairly regularly, and enjoys his favorite evening broadcast somewhere near the top end of the dial.... It gives the show all it has to issue from its push-pull pair of #45 tubes, and actually fills the rambling Victorian house with its volume.