Telefunken Gravotte question.

[funken]

Hi folks!

I'm a new member with a question.
Mymother gave me my grandfather's Telefunken Gravotte radio.
I'm lost when it comes to electronics but I love and enjoy the old tube short wave radios.
Okay here's my question. On the FM dial I can receive stations up to the 98 point. Past that I can't receive any stations.

My radio is not hooked up to an antenna or ground.
any ideas?

I would like you thoughts on the Gravotte.

Thanks!
Funken

[jcmjrt]

I don't know that model but I have a couple of models of Telefunken tuners and I'm greatly impressed with their high quality sound. Mine needed restringing and cleaning but that solved issues that they had. It's not too difficult to work on amps or even preamps but Tuners can require some pretty expensive test gear to align/get them to work properly. There are a couple of guys on this board who work on tuners so you may want to box it up and send it off to them. I know that I would spend the bucks on mine to get them fixed since I've heard how great they sound.

[Sandy G]

Someone else had one of these old German Wunderkinds that wouldn't receive up past 98 or so, IIRC..Anyhow, Welcome to AK, Funken ! Where are you located, if you don't mind me asking ?

[funken]

I'm located in St. Louis Mo.
Why do you think that it will not pick up past 98?

[funken]

Thanks for your response!
I've contacted the Antique Radio Repair shop in CT.
Their not cheap. Do you know of any midwest repair folks?

[Sandy G]

I'm just guessing, but it could be the alignment's off for some reason, you've got a cap or resistor about to go, or there is a mechanical problem w/the set. The dialstring could be slipping, you could have debris in the set that's keeping the tuning caps from turning...Lotsa things.

[Chad Hauris]

In Germany at one time the FM band only went part way up of the American FM band...we have a Blaupunkt like this. However if this is the case then 98 mhz or so would be at the end of the dial.

It probably is:
1. Weak oscillator/convertor tube in FM stage or
2. Low DC voltage caused by bad selenium recitifier or bad caps.
We have worked on several of the Telefunkens/Grundigs, if you would like, our shop can give you an estimate for repairs.

[funken]

Hey Sandy!
Thanks for turning me on to Terry. I spoke with him last night. I'm shipping my radio to him Monday.

Funken
St. Louis, MO

[Sandy G]

Glad I could help. You won't be sorry...

[Jeffhs]

I would try cleaning the dial drive before doing anything drastic. It might be incredibly dirty or corroded, etc. from disuse, preventing the radio from tuning above a certain point (in your case 98 MHz). I have a Zenith C845 that would not receive FM or AM above about 105.7 and 1460, respectively, when I first got the set. I cleaned the bandswitch and tuning mechanism....presto, the thing now works perfectly (and no more noise when I turn the bandswitch; the thing was very noisy at first). No dial restringing or any other inside-the-box work necessary. I like simple repairs such as this.

As Chad mentioned, it could be also that your receiver only tunes to 98 or 100 MHz by design; the latter was (and probably still is) the top of the European FM broadcast band. Is your set's FM dial scale calibrated only to 100 MHz or so? If so, there's the explanation.

Good luck. The Telefunken sets, so I am told (I'm not familiar with the Gavotte 9 or any of their other receivers), were excellent radios. The cabinets, of these and many other German multiband radios of '50s-'60s vintage, were fine furniture pieces in their own right as well.

Get yours working as it should and you will have a fine set. You could even use this as the center of a reasonably good hi-fi system, as many of these radios were designed to be used with stereo phonographs and might even receive stereo FM, not to mention having outputs for external speakers. Just hook up a turntable or CD player to the audio input on the rear apron of the chassis (there should be a five- or six-pin DIN socket [Europe's answer to our RCA plug] back there; most German multiband sets had them) and you should be in business.

[Telecolor 3007]

Some old german radios work on F.M. (U.K.W) only up to 100 Mhz!!!

[inkboy1]

in post-war europe, fm frequencies above 100 mhz were set aside for use by french police, so european tuners ended at 100 mhz. but sets built for export to the u.s. had tuners that went up to 108 mhz. t-funk u.s. export models usually had suffixes of "u" at the end of the model number, as in "gavotte 8u."

[GrundigXpert]

It could be that the ECC85 tube is not oscillating over that frequency. Try replacing the tube. Of course, it could be a different fault as well, such as a defective capacitor.