Truetone and Sentinel battery farm radios

[radiotvnut]

Here are two 1.5V/90V battery operated tube radios that were made shortly after WWII ended.

The first one is a Truetone (Western Auto) and this is a 5-tube set with TRF stage; so, it should be a good performer. I don't know who actually built it; but, I've seen the same chassis in a Ward's Airline.

The second one is a 4-tube Sentinel and this one has some shipping damage. The sender wrapped it well in bubblewrap; but, failed to put any kind of padding inside the set to cushion the chassis. The result was that the chassis mounts broke loose from the cabinet and the thin plastic dial scale was busted from the chassis moving around. I contacted the seller and he refunded most of my money for the radio. I think I can fix the chassis mounts; but, the only thing I know to do for the broken dial is to send it to one of these companies who makes reproduction radio dials and see if they can custom make one for me.

[dieseljeep]

K.R.C. is Kingston Radio Corp. IIRC, they took over the radio biz from Fairbanks-Morse when they divested from home products.
It seems that they only made radios for Wards, Gambles and Western Auto.
I have a Coronado console with PP 6L6's, that is Kingston built, pre-war. It appears that all their line operated sets were transformer powered, which is fine with me.

[Captainclock]

If you do decide to get your Sentinel Radio's tuning dial replaced, whatever you do, DO NOT go through a company called Radio Daze to get your dial replicated/replaced, because I had an old Stromberg Carlson AM/SW/Phono Radio from about 1946 that my tuning dial which was glass with reverse painted graphics that got busted when I was in the middle of restoring the radio. And I tried going through them to get a new dial for my radio and they did nothing but give me the full runaround and kept promising me that they would make me a dial once they got in a piece of equipment they supposedly needed to use to make glass dials and they gave me a timeline of about 2 weeks for the equipment to get in and that they would be able to get to work on my dial, well 2 weeks ended up turning into 2 months and they still said that they were supposedly waiting on their equipment to arrive and so finally I told them that if you aren't going to be able to stick with your promised timeline schedule then I'm not going to do business with you anymore because its rediculous to be told initially only two weeks and then it end up being more like 2+months or more and you still aren't any closer to getting your equipment than you were in the beginning.

So as my story illustrates, they aren't worth your business because they're more than likely going to make up excuses as to why they can't make your dial and then stick you with what seems like fairly reasonable timelines for when they can get your tuning dial made which will then turn into a long drawn out timeline with no signs of you ever getting your dial made. I'd recommend you trying some of the other radio parts replication firms, but not Radio Daze.

Hope this info helps.

[radiotvnut]

Over the years, I've heard similar stories about them. It's bad enough when such happens with a set that belongs to you; but, it's even worse when it happens to a set that you're repairing for someone because you are the one who is going to feel the heat from customer because you're taking too long.