Emerson 540A restoration

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by bob91343

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.

It's a tough set to work on for sure. I'm having to peel away layers to replace the old caps.

My father, who would have turned 97 years old last Friday, hated Emersons. His complaint was that you'd sometimes have to remove some parts just to get at parts buried deeper down. Another factor was that his mother in law owned an Emerson 708 AA5 radio. Back in the early 70's I was in high school and was trying to fix that set. My father berates me for spending time on it "That radio is a piece of trash". He had the standard issue mother in law-son in law relationship Anyway, I never could fix that radio, today I know (from what I remember of it) that the IF transformers had silver migration disease. But that wasn't on my radar, problems had to be wax caps (find the bad one) or a bad tube.

That IF transformer below deck is a really ugly design.