GE Clock Radio Model 660

[jsowers]

I had one of these when I was a kid too, in the 1970s. Mine was a sort of mustard yellow color. The filter cap finally went on mine and I just used the clock. It has three clear plastic knobs on the clock that are missing on yours.

Here is the schematic and parts list and tube diagram, on Radiomuseum:

http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/general_el_660.html

You can download up to three documents a day. I just downloaded three and they're very clear scans.

You might want to move the leads of the caps you replaced a little farther apart. One cap's lead looks like it's touching another cap. Might be an optical illusion, but I thought I'd mention it. Amazing how much smaller the caps are.

Your tubes, from the diagram, are 1U5 at the bottom, right above that is the 3V4, then to the right is 1U4 and at the very top is 1R5. That's probably the tube that's causing the problem since you have audio. The 1R5 is the oscillator-mixer tube. You may want to clean the tube sockets.

I remember my radio like this being very microphonic, in that jarring it created all kinds of odd noises sort of like a xylophone. You're not old enough to remember Tom Terrific on Captain Kangaroo, but it sounded like the sound effect used on that.

Good luck on your restoration.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by jsowers

I had one of these when I was a kid too, in the 1970s. Mine was a sort of mustard yellow color. The filter cap finally went on mine and I just used the clock. It has three clear plastic knobs on the clock that are missing on yours.

Here is the schematic and parts list and tube diagram, on Radiomuseum:

http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/general_el_660.html

You can download up to three documents a day. I just downloaded three and they're very clear scans.

You might want to move the leads of the caps you replaced a little farther apart. One cap's lead looks like it's touching another cap. Might be an optical illusion, but I thought I'd mention it. Amazing how much smaller the caps are.

Your tubes, from the diagram, are 1U5 at the bottom, right above that is the 3V4, then to the right is 1U4 and at the very top is 1R5. That's probably the tube that's causing the problem since you have audio. The 1R5 is the oscillator-mixer tube. You may want to clean the tube sockets.

I remember my radio like this being very microphonic, in that jarring it created all kinds of odd noises sort of like a xylophone. You're not old enough to remember Tom Terrific on Captain Kangaroo, but it sounded like the sound effect used on that.

Good luck on your restoration.

The tube filaments are wired series-parallel so they can run on 3 volts.
It's possible the 1U4 and the 1R5 are reversed, so you'll get some noise when touching the antenna.
When installing that type 'lytic, I use insulation stripped from scrap wire and small shrink sleeving. Makes for a neater job, instead of using electrical tape, but tape is better than nothing. It doesn't take much to burn out those battery tubes.
Take voltage readings with the radio and power supply connected. The selenium rectifiers might not be putting out enough voltage. The B+ should be close to 90 volts, even though, on batteries it uses only 67.5 volts "B".
I have one just like it.

[MadMan]

(That feel when these forums don't have a [youtube] BBCode.)

Suffice it to say (in text)...

IT'S ALIVE!

Boy, you guys both called it! The 1U4 and 1R5 were switched. That's exactly what it was, only those two. I'm happy to say it's working nicely, even sounds halfway decent (I also repaired like 5 big cracks in the speaker cone, so I feel good about that). I thought for a minute it wasn't tuning anything on the high end, so I consulted another radio only to find there are like no stations between 1100 and 1600. But actually, there is one at the very tippy-top that a newer radio could get, but this one can't. But it does tune everything else on down. Oh well, I consider this little quirky radio to have made a full recovery nonetheless.

Thanks guys! I finally fixed something! (That I've posted here lol)

Originally Posted by jsowers

It has three clear plastic knobs on the clock that are missing on yours.

Clear? Wow. Yeah, I never had the knobs. This thing was so abused. Clear, huh? I wonder if I could get some clear rod stock... maybe a horizontal blinds adjustment thingy rod? Cut knobs out of it and polish the ends. Hmm.

Originally Posted by jsowers

Here is the schematic and parts list and tube diagram, on Radiomuseum:

http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/general_el_660.html

You can download up to three documents a day. I just downloaded three and they're very clear scans.

omg... I feel stupid. I only barely googled it, I just assumed there would be no diagrams available. And you know what happens when you assume. Thanks bro, I downloaded all 5 pages (I have hax). What bs is that though? Why don't they just put all the pages of each thingy into one pdf and then allow only 3 downloads per day? Psh.

Originally Posted by jsowers

You might want to move the leads of the caps you replaced a little farther apart. One cap's lead looks like it's touching another cap. Might be an optical illusion, but I thought I'd mention it. Amazing how much smaller the caps are.

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

When installing that type 'lytic, I use insulation stripped from scrap wire and small shrink sleeving. Makes for a neater job, instead of using electrical tape, but tape is better than nothing. It doesn't take much to burn out those battery tubes.

No worries mates, the leads are far from each other. Plus, I just slapped it together, wanted to make it work first, I'll insulate it somehow. Later. This... this radio has been so abused, it's not like some guy with a jeweler's lens is going to appraise this, or something. And isn't it amazing how much smaller the caps are? Especially in the PSU. You could fit like 20 of the new caps inside the one old one.

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

Take voltage readings with the radio and power supply connected. The selenium rectifiers might not be putting out enough voltage. The B+ should be close to 90 volts, even though, on batteries it uses only 67.5 volts "B".
I have one just like it.

Actually, it reads 65v, so maybe the recitfier is weak or something, but it's still more than enough to make it work, which it is currently. Btw, fun fact, I have the original B battery, like the exact same one in the photo on the diagram.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by MadMan

(That feel when these forums don't have a [youtube] BBCode.)

Suffice it to say (in text)...

IT'S ALIVE!

Boy, you guys both called it! The 1U4 and 1R5 were switched. That's exactly what it was, only those two. I'm happy to say it's working nicely, even sounds halfway decent (I also repaired like 5 big cracks in the speaker cone, so I feel good about that). I thought for a minute it wasn't tuning anything on the high end, so I consulted another radio only to find there are like no stations between 1100 and 1600. But actually, there is one at the very tippy-top that a newer radio could get, but this one can't. But it does tune everything else on down. Oh well, I consider this little quirky radio to have made a full recovery nonetheless.

Thanks guys! I finally fixed something! (That I've posted here lol)



Clear? Wow. Yeah, I never had the knobs. This thing was so abused. Clear, huh? I wonder if I could get some clear rod stock... maybe a horizontal blinds adjustment thingy rod? Cut knobs out of it and polish the ends. Hmm.



omg... I feel stupid. I only barely googled it, I just assumed there would be no diagrams available. And you know what happens when you assume. Thanks bro, I downloaded all 5 pages (I have hax). What bs is that though? Why don't they just put all the pages of each thingy into one pdf and then allow only 3 downloads per day? Psh.




No worries mates, the leads are far from each other. Plus, I just slapped it together, wanted to make it work first, I'll insulate it somehow. Later. This... this radio has been so abused, it's not like some guy with a jeweler's lens is going to appraise this, or something. And isn't it amazing how much smaller the caps are? Especially in the PSU. You could fit like 20 of the new caps inside the one old one.



Actually, it reads 65v, so maybe the recitfier is weak or something, but it's still more than enough to make it work, which it is currently. Btw, fun fact, I have the original B battery, like the exact same one in the photo on the diagram.

Mine's kind of a beater as well. The radio is in better shape than the clock/PS unit. The clock movement is broken loose from the case front.
Also, I discovered the radio has a bad IF transformer, crackling, low sensitivity.
I had it working fine about 10 years ago, replacing the 'lytics in the PS unit.

[MadMan]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

Mine's kind of a beater as well. The radio is in better shape than the clock/PS unit. The clock movement is broken loose from the case front.
Also, I discovered the radio has a bad IF transformer, crackling, low sensitivity.
I had it working fine about 10 years ago, replacing the 'lytics in the PS unit.

I wonder if someone smashed the clock when the alarm went off lol.

My clock also broke off the front cover. It has 4 protuding nubs that the screw go into, and all 4 were broken off AND the front cover was cracked almost in half. Happy to say that a lot of glue and elbow grease has fixed all that. Will do a post with pics of all the 'body work.'

And yeah, apparently the PSU's giant waxy cap is a common problem. I imagine it was a cheap capacitor even when it was made. Come to think of it, it's not even branded. The little waxy one in the radio was - 'Planet' - and that was probably ok.

[old_coot88]

I can't pull up the schematic on my (Linux) rig, but am curious as heck about that series/parallel filament wiring. Presumably it's running from B+ thru a dropper. If so, then if one string goes open, then the other string will have twice the voltage on it. A zener would be great for protection, but there were no zeners when the radio was made. Just bein' curious.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by old_coot88

I can't pull up the schematic on my (Linux) rig, but am curious as heck about that series/parallel filament wiring. Presumably it's running from B+ thru a dropper. If so, then if one string goes open, then the other string will have twice the voltage on it. A zener would be great for protection, but there were no zeners when the radio was made. Just bein' curious.

That radio has a small power transformer with a winding for the B+ and a winding for filaments. The B+ uses a tiny selenium and the filament supply uses a selenium bridge for that purpose.

[MadMan]

Originally Posted by old_coot88

I can't pull up the schematic on my (Linux) rig, but am curious as heck about that series/parallel filament wiring. Presumably it's running from B+ thru a dropper. If so, then if one string goes open, then the other string will have twice the voltage on it. A zener would be great for protection, but there were no zeners when the radio was made. Just bein' curious.

HERE

The PSU wiring was actually extremely confusing for me. They could've just had the double transformer, two selenium rectifier bridges, and maybe a capacitor or two, but instead they came up with this crazy contraption. Before I got the diagram, I actually drew my own just to see if I could make sense of it! The really weird thing is... they have a proper rectifier bridge for the filament power, and then they just use a tiny single diode for the (what I would consider much more important) 67.5v B+. I just... don't even. And actually, despite what the diagram says, the power coming 'out' of the transformer for B+ is actually 110v. It really looks like they put one diode in there to roughly halve the power, and cleaned up the oscillations with a capacitor and called it good. Come to think of it, maybe that's the reason that capacitor went bad in the first place.

Originally Posted by jsowers

They were very much like mini-blind rods, clear plastic with ridges all around the edge, but solid on the front and they had a slightly raised pointer ridge, but you could just paint a line on the knob. What would be hard is to get the hole in the back right with the divider in it. Those shafts are split and the knob would just spin without the divider. The clock even has a sleep timer for the radio, which was a high-end thing in the 1950s. It didn't have a snooze control, though.

Actually I was thinking about it. I could cut sections of a miniblind rod, polish them, drill the holes, and for the divider thingy, I could make a tool - a copy of the shafts on the clock - and cut a toothed pattern in a tiny strip of sheet metal, then use the tool to press the sheet metal into each knob, thus creating the divider.

Speaking of which, one of the shafts is damaged (and poorly repaired), so I'll have to make a replacement at some point.

Originally Posted by jsowers

The tips of the hands glow in the dark, or mine did.

That's great that you got your tubes in the right place and it works! I'm glad that's all it was.

Mine do... but they're very very faint even in a pitch black room. The halflife of the radioactive crap must be up. Unlike my vintage refrigerator, which has a neat inside door handle that still glows brightly in the dark. Ahh, delicious radioactive material all over my food.

And actually, I'm positive the giant waxy capacitor in the PSU was also bad before I replaced it.

[old_coot88]

[QUOTE=MadMan;3177106]

HERE
Aha. L'arn something new every day. All the battery portables I ever serviced used the B+ dropper for the 50ma. filament string.

The PSU wiring was actually extremely confusing for me. They could've just had the double transformer, two selenium rectifier bridges, and maybe a capacitor or two, but instead they came up with this crazy contraption. Before I got the diagram, I actually drew my own just to see if I could make sense of it! The really weird thing is... they have a proper rectifier bridge for the filament power, and then they just use a tiny single diode for the (what I would consider much more important) 67.5v B+. I just... don't even. And actually, despite what the diagram says, the power coming 'out' of the transformer for B+ is actually 110v. It really looks like they put one diode in there to roughly halve the power, and cleaned up the oscillations with a capacitor and called it good. Come to think of it, maybe that's the reason that capacitor went bad in the first place.

Actually the half-wave B+ supply is quite adequate for the low current requirement (no filament string to supply). The 'A' supply on the other hand, is full-wave with fairly massive filtering to deliver ripple-free current (at 100 ma in this design). Very snazzy and makes total sense.

If you felt like raising the B+ a bit, you could play with values of the voltage divider R13/R14.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by MadMan

Unlike my vintage refrigerator, which has a neat inside door handle that still glows brightly in the dark. Ahh, delicious radioactive material all over my food.

That has to be a safety feature from shortly before the government mandated magnetic door handles.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by MadMan

I wonder if someone smashed the clock when the alarm went off lol.

My clock also broke off the front cover. It has 4 protuding nubs that the screw go into, and all 4 were broken off AND the front cover was cracked almost in half. Happy to say that a lot of glue and elbow grease has fixed all that. Will do a post with pics of all the 'body work.'

And yeah, apparently the PSU's giant waxy cap is a common problem. I imagine it was a cheap capacitor even when it was made. Come to think of it, it's not even branded. The little waxy one in the radio was - 'Planet' - and that was probably ok.

I tried remounting the clock movement and it has to be the most crumbly plastic I ever seen! The bosses broke away from the contact assembly on the back of the clock. I drilled and used a 6/32 screw to remount it and the entire back cracked, when I tightened the screw and nut. I cleaned the clock knobs and installed them and one cracked in half when I turned it.
I'm leaving it the way it is! Like the letters GE mean: Good Enough!

[MadMan]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

I tried remounting the clock movement and it has to be the most crumbly plastic I ever seen! The bosses broke away from the contact assembly on the back of the clock. I drilled and used a 6/32 screw to remount it and the entire back cracked, when I tightened the screw and nut. I cleaned the clock knobs and installed them and one cracked in half when I turned it.
I'm leaving it the way it is! Like the letters GE mean: Good Enough!

Dude tell me about it, this is the crappiest plastic ever. Literally touching my radio made it break in several more places, it was... aggravating. One thing broke, then another, and another. I'll rephrase my previous statement: it took a lot of glue, and a LOT of patience. In a way, I was kind of anticipating it all to fail in a spectacular pile of super-glue-glazed plastic chunks, but it all went together just fine. :3

Thanks for mailing that thingy btw.

(Vinyl still prefers her headphones.)

[Captainclock]

Originally Posted by MadMan

Dude tell me about it, this is the crappiest plastic ever. Literally touching my radio made it break in several more places, it was... aggravating. One thing broke, then another, and another. I'll rephrase my previous statement: it took a lot of glue, and a LOT of patience. In a way, I was kind of anticipating it all to fail in a spectacular pile of super-glue-glazed plastic chunks, but it all went together just fine. :3

Thanks for mailing that thingy btw.

(Vinyl still prefers her headphones.)

The local antique mall near me has the clock part only from this particular clock radio, but the radio part is MIA so I'm guessing the radio failed but the clock still worked so the previous owner of the unit kept the clock and tossed the radio assembly. the clock part by the way is still in excellent shape yet with all of its knobs intact yet and everything. Perhaps you might consider coming over to Elkhart, Indiana over to an Antique Mall called 820 Antiques which is on 820 Ward Street just off of Beardsley Street, In Elkhart, Indiana.

[jsowers]

MadMan wrote: Clear? Wow. Yeah, I never had the knobs. This thing was so abused. Clear, huh? I wonder if I could get some clear rod stock... maybe a horizontal blinds adjustment thingy rod? Cut knobs out of it and polish the ends. Hmm.

They were very much like mini-blind rods, clear plastic with ridges all around the edge, but solid on the front and they had a slightly raised pointer ridge, but you could just paint a line on the knob. What would be hard is to get the hole in the back right with the divider in it. Those shafts are split and the knob would just spin without the divider. The clock even has a sleep timer for the radio, which was a high-end thing in the 1950s. It didn't have a snooze control, though.

I wish I had mine to take a picture. It was in great condition on the outside, but the clock worked long after the radio quit and I loaned just the clock to someone and I'm not sure I ever got it back. The tips of the hands glow in the dark, or mine did.

That's great that you got your tubes in the right place and it works! I'm glad that's all it was.
This design reminds me of the optional radio that came in the 1958 Oldsmobiles and Pontiacs, the Trans-Portable. It worked in the car or out of the car on its own battery.