roadside find, Philco 39-116

[gadget73]

So on my way to get lunch today I spotted a big cabinet sitting in someone's driveway, with the unmistakable appearance of tubes. I stopped and asked the lady who answered the door what she was doing with the set. Her response was "helping you put it in the back of your truck". Needless to say thats the response I was hoping for. It was garage cleanout time, and the old Philco had to go. I also got a tube caddy full of assorted stuff that I haven't gone through yet. I was told that it did work last anyone knew, but that was a while ago.

Cabinet is decent, with a few chips out of the veneer along the rear edge on top. Grille cloth is also shot, looks like maybe the cat decided to stretch and claw at it because there are 2 round spots where its gone, and the board underneath is torn up a bit. Nothing a bolt of grille fabric and some staples won't fix. Speaker is the 10" electrodynamic, not ripped, etc. It also needs a tuning string. The one for the capacitor is there, but the one for the needle snapped. Actually I didn't see the needle when I pulled the chassis, have to go look for that. Its presently warming slowly on the light bulb variac. I've got a 75 watter in there at the moment, and its showing about 68 volts at the radio. I've got a faint buzz at the speaker, so its doing something. Not enough juice to actually function at the moment though.

I have never seen such a complex mess inside a radio before. The mechanicals for the volume control and power circuit are cool, and the band switch is a rather involved looking thing. The only down side, I did not get the mystery control. I may stop back tomorrow and ask about it. I didn't realize this was *that* model till I got it home and did some research.


Anyway, back out to the workshop, I want to go through that tube caddy and see whats in there.

[gadget73]

I found a gremlin. Got the voltage up to about 85, and the clock motor that runs the volume control is in perpetual 'down' mode. I had to cut the wire to it. Considering the insulation on the wires running to the control switches is only about half there, I'm assuming its got a short in the wiring. All new internal wiring is high on the priority list. Also, since its rubber, I can replace it with modern wiring without messing with the aesthetics. I think I might actually try restoring this one with re-stuffed caps and such so it retains that original look as much as possible.

Anyway at 85 volts, once I manually gave it some volume and an antenna, it does receive faintly, so the chances that the thing actually does function seem reasonably good at this point.

As far as appearance, I oiled the cabinet with some Pledge restoring stuff I had around. Has orange oil in it. Cabinet positively glows, its quite nice. Still needs more cleaning but it looks nice. Top needs to be re-veneered. The 2 chips on the back edge, and I can feel where the veneer is warped a bit, and seems to be pulling off the wood under it.

I'm also trying to clean up the brass plated faceplate, but not having so much luck with that so far. I'm using a mild metal polish and it definitely looks better, however there are some dark spots in it. It might have actually corroded through the brass plating to the steel underneath but I'm not sure. Anyone have any suggestions for some sort of polish for that type of faceplate?


All in all, for free, I'd say not bad.

[Randy Bassham]

Thats a pretty nice radio, it's equipped with the Philco Mystery remote control. The remote shows up on ebay frequently, looks like a wooden box with a telephone dial on it.

[bgadow]

I have one which is step down from this model, without the mystery control or motors. A great performer and a sharp looking radio, I think. I don't think mine ever got taken out of service; it had been recapped in the 60s or 70s and worked well when I got it.

[Phil Nelson]

Not my favorite cabinet, but an interesting radio. It's usually listed as a "fourteen tube" set, but six of those tubes are used for the Mystery Control (one in the Control and five in the main chassis).

Which means it's actually an eight-tube receiver.

The Mystery Control looks like this:



Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

[toxcrusadr]

Wow, what a find for free. I think the 37 and 38 models are also highly though of. Nice save!

[gadget73]

Well I got her up to full power, and it works. Also fixed the volume control issue, the big rotary switch thing for the remote functions was turned all the way over to vol down / off. I manually rotated it away from that and the controls all work normally. I was pulling in a station from Pittsburgh using just a length of speaker wire hung from the overhang outside my workshop. Pittsburgh is 242 miles from me, so all in all, I'd say its got good ears. Seems to have a nice voice too. I had the speaker just sitting on the table but it sounded decent. I imagine it would sound much cleaner in the cabinet. I ran through all the bands, and was able to pull in something on all three, including a preset on the remote mode.

Its got a hum, and its got all original caps in there, so its definitely going to need electrical restoration. Needs some wiring work as well to replace severely deteriorated original wiring. About half the tubes have been replaced with random ones. 2 Cunningham tubes, a Sylvania JAN tube, couple Raytheons as well. Not sure if it actually cooked them, or someone was just in there replacing stuff for the heck of it at some point.


I also dug through that box of tubes. Not much special, looks like mostly used tubes. I now have about a half dozen 5U4 tubes though, as well as a few other rectifiers, so it looks like I won't need to buy any diodes for a while if I do any projects. Was thinking about building one of those AM tube transmitter deals that I've seen plans for, the kind that was based on some schematic for a portable record player. Might couple that to a cd player or something so I can listen to actual music on my nice vintage set once I get it done. It probably won't be for quite some time though.