Becker Europa LMU car radio

[dcl0]

Way back in the early eighties when I used to prowl around junkyards dreaming of the classic cars I wanted own, I found this Becker Europa LMU radio in a mid-fifties Mercedes 219 sedan. They wouldn't sell me the car but they let me buy the radio. I recently pulled it out of storage and looked it over and found that the wiring in the cable running between the head unit and the power supply/audio output unit had that rubber insulation that falls apart to the touch.

It is a custom cable containing a shielded line for the audio from the head unit back to the audio output tube (6BQ5), two wires for B+ to the head unit, one running ground for the on/off relay through the head unit switch, two tube filiament lines and the whole thing wrapped in shielded mesh to connect the grounds of both units. I managed to reconstruct it.

After replacing all the leaky paper caps (the electrolyics test fine), the unit plays nicely. But what a PITA to work on! Point-to point wiring with everything crammed in. Luckily the leads were not wrapped around the terminals, but instead just inserted about 1 mm and soldered. I see why the switch to printed circuit boards occurred.

LMU (long wave, medium wave (AM) and Ultrakurzwelle (FM). Is there any longwave listening in the US? All I seem to get is a lot of noise.