1935 GE Model A-53 AM/SW Tombstone Radio

[old_coot88]

With an ohmmeter set to RX1, be sure the negative ends of C19 and C20 are securely grounded (zero ohms) to chassis. Any resistance here would definitely produce ripple in the B+.

[vortalexfan]

OK, so a little update with this radio:

I changed out the 5Z4 for a 5Y3G tube and installed a 6V6G tube into the radio and the hum has gone away, but a new issue as arisen, whenever I touch the chassis anywhere including the knobs or ground my signal generator to the chassis, the radio goes completely silent.
But then when I remove my hand or the signal generator ground clip from the chassis or from any of the knobs, the radio comes to life.

Is it because with this radio being made to utilize the metal tubes they had one of the heater pins grounded to the shield pin of those tubes and thus to the chassis?

If so should I go and unground those heater pins to make this radio work with more modern glass tubes?

[vortalexfan]

Well I got it working, unfortunately it has to be turned up full blast in order to hear anything on it, which is what you guys warned me about with this unit because of its lack of AVC circuitry, the hum is still there but its not nearly as bad as it was, in fact when I turn the volume up all the way the hum goes away.

Unfortunately I couldn't tell how good the reception was on it because my housemate (who caught covid from his dad) had his desktop computer running (which is a high end gaming desktop) which has a super noisy power supply which basically renders AM Radio useless in my house, it just sounds like a a bunch of hash noise, across the whole dial with one local station that manages to break through the noise, the weird thing is that the noise seems to be not only on the AC line but also radiated through the air because even my battery radios are affected by the noise...