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Many people who collect radios eventually find themselves with a problem. They've accumulated too many consoles and have run out of space for them, prompting a need to dispose of the less desirable ones. One day in October 2003, a fellow in this position decided to deal with his problem by bringing an entire trailerful of junk consoles to my radio club's swap meet and offered them to anybody who wanted them, $5 each.
Most were not appealing to me, but my eye was drawn to this sad-sack piece. Looking in the back, it was obvious that this had once been a high quality set. Eleven tubes, one of which was an eye tube. Push-pull 6F6 audio. Tall, handsome cabinet. I took a chance and handed over my five bucks. No knobs, no tubes, no shields, three missing pushbuttons. The buttons will be the biggest problem; I could use any generic knobs and I have tubes for it. I'll need 11 - 6U7G RF, 6J7G converter, 6J5G oscillator, 6U7G IF, 6H6 (metal) detector, 6J7G first audio, 6J5G inverter (called a "balancing exciter" for reasons unknown to me), the two 6F6G output tubes, a 6U5 eye tube and a 5Y3G rectifier.
Interestingly, the set has no brand name on it. Its identity was confirmed by a label inside as model A12 made by W.G. (Wells-Gardner). A fading rubber stamp on the back mentioned that it was "Air-Tested by Schuster's". Aha. Schuster's was one of Milwaukee's great department stores of the days of yore, gone since being bought by Gimbels in the '60s. Obviously this was a house brand radio. Usually Schuster's sets carried the brand name "Arlington"; I'm not sure why it doesn't appear on this unit. Communications with Wells-Gardner collector Bruce Eddy of Michigan revealed that this was their top-of-the-line set for the 1939 model year, and also provided me with a photo of the set's correct knobs.
After I brought the set home I worked to see what kind of shape it was in. The audio amp operated, but no radio reception. I wasn't very good at radio restoration at all at this point, so I tried replacing a couple of parts and finally gave up. And there it sat in my basement, unattended, for over a year.
Eventually we'll be moving to a new home so a decision is going to have to be made about the future of this space-waster. If it can't be made to do something useful without undue pain and expense, it'll probably be parted out and junked. But it's worth the effort to see if it can be made to run. So up to the bench it goes.
January 31, 2005
Wow, I hadn't realized how filthy the bandswitch was in this set. I grabbed the contact cleaner and thoroughly doused
the whole thing. Accidentally got a trimmer wet. No matter; I won't get to the set again until it dries. After I sprayed
the bandswitch I pushed the buttons a few times to work them. The bandswitching is done by the three leftmost buttons in the
row of buttons below the knobs. The leftmost is shortwave, the second is police band, the third is regular broadcast
band and the fourth is the Off switch. The other six buttons are electronic automatic presets. Pushing any of these buttons
or any of the bandswitch buttons turns on the power.
Next step is to fix my ham-handed modifications of a year ago, put filter caps back in, reload it with tubes and see what the set is capable of doing.
February 1
Apparently it's capable of making buzzing noises. I did the work as noted above and turned it on. Nothing smoked or
blew up, which is nice, but turning the tuning cap just made it alternate between noise and silence. I put my finger on the grid
cap of the 1st audio tube, which made a thin buzz in the speaker. Hauled out the signal generator and applied an 455kc RF signal to
the grid cap of the 6J7 converter tube, which instead of a nice 400Hz tone made a nasty, raspy buzz in the speaker.
Not particularly impressive. But thinking about it later, I realized this meant that at least something was getting through from there to the speaker. I wondered if perhaps some of the paper caps were in such bad shape that they were having this effect. I'll have to review the schematic to see if there are any I should try to pinpoint first. I wish I had remembered to try to apply an audio tone to the 1st audio grid cap, which would have narrowed things down a little, but I was in bed before I thought of it. Oh well. Fortunately, this chassis is very large and spacious, which makes working on it rather easy, and the schematic is excellent. I guess I'll try to figure out where the distortion is occurring and see if I can make it make nice sounds.
March 9
The set is back in storage for the foreseeable future. I don't have time or energy to work on it now, and other more interesting projects beckon.
April 2, 2006
The chassis and speaker of this radio are home again. Why? A couple weeks ago I was made aware that another collector in northern Wisconsin has a parts chassis identical to this one which he was considering tossing. It occurs to me that I may need parts from his chassis. I asked him to hang onto it for awhile until I could see if I needed anything off of it. So today when I went to my brother's house where several of my sets are stored I brought the chassis and speaker back.
April 3
I filled the radio up with tubes, and troubleshooting continues without much success. I can get a tone out when applying a modulated signal to the grid of the IF tube. That means everything from there on is good. But I get nothing out when applying the same signal to the grid of the converter. Strange. After some work I give up for the night.
April 4
SUCCESS!
And it only took three hours to get there.....
After much more shooting in the dark I found that applying the modulated signal to the plate of the converter gave me the tone in the speaker, but applying it to the grid did not. Very strange. That means there's something wrong with this tube. I tried a different tube. No change. Went to the schematic again, looking for something different. There are expected voltage readings on the schematic. so I tested. Plate should be 232 volts, measured 250. Good. Screen should be 110 volts, measured 250. Not so good. Cathode should be 6 volts. Measured 250 volts. What?!
And that's when I noticed the wire soldered to pin 8 (cathode) of the 6J7 whose other end was connected to absolutely nothing. Studying the schematic, I found that this was to be connected to a very odd place, a tap on the shortwave oscillator coil. It took a moment to figure out which of its seven terminals was the correct one. And, as it turned out, it was none of them. There was a bare spot on the coil when the wax was burned away. That was where this wire was to be connected.
Turned on the soldering iron, carefully soldered the wire directly to the coil. Not all that easy, but once the wire stuck I measured the resistance to the other terminals, and it was fine. Now, the moment of truth. I turned the set on and the volume all the way up.
After a little tuning, there was 620 WTMJ. More tuning presented a couple more stations on the high end of the dial. We have a radio.
I let the junk chassis owner know I didn't need his parts, wrote this up and now I'm going to bed. I don't know when I'll work on this again, for now it's enough to know that it lives and is restorable. This set annoyed me, because it's one of the few I own I've never heard play. And now a 2-1/2 year delay is finally over.
Here's the RF part of the underside of the chassis. As big as this unit is, you'd think it would be easier to service. Oh well....
April 6
Tonight I replaced four paper caps with new mylars, replaced a handful of out-of-spec carbon resistors and fixed the mess around the oscillator tube I made two years ago when I didn't know what I was doing. The set is still playing, but not very loudly and it won't until I replace the caps in the audio stages. All the original caps in this set are extremely leaky, to the point where their DC resistance is measured in the thousands of ohms. Not good.
I had replaced the filter caps and two other papers in 2004, and the quality of that work was okay so I left it alone. That leaves nine paper caps left to do, seven of which I don't have in stock. I wanted to go to the electronics shop in town to pick them up today but they closed before I got there. The other two caps to be replaced are attached to some of the same terminals as the ones I need so I think this is a good place to stop tonight.
I also checked the rest of the resistors and didn't find any so seriously out of tolerance that they needed to be replaced. So that's enough with that. Once it's recapped I'll have to make sure it's working right, fix the missing dial string, clean thoroughly and align. That should do it for the chassis.
April 7
The caps were purchased and installed tonight. A few resistors in the audio stages that did need replacement were done.
The radio is playing. But the volume is pretty low for what it is. A push-pull 6F6 audio stage ought to blow you out of the room at max volume on a local station. I have to turn it up that far for normal listening volume. I am also getting very large excursions of the cone at certain settings of the volume control; it's actually worse at low volume than high. Something's still amiss. Not sure what yet, but I'll have to find it.
April 8
Signal tracers are awesome troubleshooting tools. Makes it quick and easy to find where signal is being lost.
I had a nice strong signal at the cap of the 6K7 IF tube, a metal one of which I was using in place of the 6U7 that belongs there, because 6U7s don't work well without shields and I don't have a spare. Then I pulled the 6H6 and checked the signal at pin 3, where the signal is input to the detector, and got a signal so loud I had to turn the tracer volume almost all the way down to 0. So everything up to the detector is happy. But the cap of the 6J7 first audio tube has a very weak signal, even with the volume control turned all the way up. The signal is being attenuated someplace. I tried bypassing the tone control pot, but that wasn't it. The AVC is fine; I installed an eye tube and it acts as expected so no problems there. Hmm. Just have to keep plugging away as time permits.
(later)
Found the problem. Boy do I feel dumb. Tracing around led me to the phonograph jack on the back of the chassis. I was tracing from the volume control, where the volume was low, to the cap, where it was still low. The other side of the cap was tied to a wire which ran to the jack, which was just an octal socket. The wire led to pin 7. Another wire was connected to pin 5, which was connected to the output of the detector. At pin 7, the volume was very low. At pin 5, it was loud and normal.
That's when I remembered that when I got the set there was a shorting plug in the socket that connected pins 5 and 7. I had pulled it out long ago, and now I don't remember where it is. But that was what was wrong. Without a phono player installed, you have to short the pins together. That's the connection between the detector and the volume control. Without that the front end isn't connected to the audio stages. Duh.
So, to test, I soldered a wire across the inside of the jack connecting the two pins. Turn the radio back on, and it is working perfectly. Such a simple, stupid thing to forget. I could kick myself.
Two hours later, the radio is still working great. So except for a few problems the chassis is done. First, it needs cleaning. Second, it doesn't work on the shortwave band. My signal generator and tracer tell me that signal goes as far as the top cap of the 6J7 mixer, but doesn't get to the IF. I don't know yet if this is because it's losing oscillation or because the alignment is bad, or some other problem. That will take some troubleshooting. Also, I'll have to restring the dial, which looks pretty straightforward (there's a diagram with the schematic). And finally I'll want to unsolder my wire in the phono jack and build a correct phono cable for the set. The original cable would have had the radio-phono switch built into the cable. I can duplicate that. That should do the chassis. The cabinet is still in storage; I may not get to it for a few months. I guess we'll see.
(even later.......) After much pain the shortwave band is working. I'll spare you the ugly details; long story short is that I wasn't getting any oscillation, and the plate voltage of the 6J5 and the screen and cathode voltages of the 6J7G mixer were all low. Replacing the mixer tube with a different one fixed the problem. I don't have any idea why. Especially since when I put the original 6J7 I was using back in, it still worked. I suppose I probably had a bad connection somewhere that I jostled just the right way when I reinserted the tube. I'm not entirely thrilled with that and will be keeping an eye on it; if the problem returns I'll have to check my solder joints around the osc and mixer tubes I think.
Next order of business is to restring the dial so I can align it.
April 9
After much more pain I think I have the shortwave bands fixed correctly this time.
The oscillator on the shortwave band quit again. I finally got disgusted enough with this to post to ARF looking for clues. I got lots of good clues. Eventually, though, after poking and prodding around the underside of the set I found that moving the wire between the 6J7 mixer's cathode and the oscillator coil (the one I fixed five days ago that actually got the set working for the first time) wasn't well placed and the oscillator was dying. While monitoring the oscillator grid voltage with a VTVM, I gave the wire a tug here and a tug there, and suddenly the VTVM needle swung from 0 volts all the way up to -8. I tuned to a station, and it came in. And since then it's been working continuously. I'm still not really happy, I wonder if it will die again if, say, the set takes a bumpy car ride somewhere.
Also got the dial restrung (even though this set uses a relatively simple dial stringing setup, this is an absolute pain of a job) with some thin metal string I had laying around and the spring from a ballpoint pen. Worked wonderfully once I actually got it done; it took over a half hour because I don't have enough hands to hold the string down where it needed to go. Maybe with more practice I'll get better at it but I don't really do many dial strings. Anyway, then I attached the pointer. For the first time I actually can use the knob to tune, and know where I'm tuning. I love it.
I replaced the power cord. No big deal there. Also I gave the topside of the chassis a light wipedown with degreaser and a toothbrush and rag to get the grime off. It doesn't look perfect but it's perfectly fine for use.
And finally I loaded up the chassis with glass tubes (even an eye tube.) It looks nice. Only problem is that there's still that metal 6K7 there in place of the 6U7G IF tube. I tried using a 6U7G with a spare Zenith shield I had laying around. Maybe it would have worked better with a glass 6K7G, but with the 6U7G I got worse reception than with the metal tube. Perhaps realigning the IF with the 6U7 in place would have helped. But the gold Zenith shield doesn't look good in this chassis. I'll have to look for a shield at the next radio show or something and get a 6U7 in there. That metal 6K7 in the wide socket meant for a shielded glass tube looks funny.
Here are some pictures.
I just need some non-metallic screwdrivers. In the past I've gotten away with using a filed-down plastic knife to align trimmers but these are too stiff and my knife keeps breaking. I need something better to do the alignment. Then if I can figure out how to make new buttons, I'll be done on this chassis.
More later.....
April 11
Took a field trip up to the city of West Bend today to run a few errands, one of which was to visit the Hobby Lobby store. Hobby Lobby carries Alumilite
products. Alumilite makes casting resins and mold putty. I bought a package of each, attempting to make my own pushbuttons to replace those that were missing. I also bought a package of skinny wooden craft sticks.
I took one of the craft sticks and filed down an end thin enough to use as a screwdriver. Now I had my non-metallic screwdriver. I attempted an alignment of the broadcast band, but when I was done it was even worse than before. Oops. Need to redo it.
My first attempts at making a mold and casting a button were pretty average. I'll keep plugging away at this and when I have something I think I can use, I'll take pictures of the chassis with ten nice clean buttons. But this is enough for the day.
April 12
After a few more attempts this is what I came up with. My biggest problem was mixing colors into the resin to make colored parts. I asked on the Forum about this; one of the responses was to mix in acrylic paint. Figuring I had little to lose, I picked up a bottle at the store today and tried it out. Well, it appears the acrylic paint I chose wasn't compatible with my epoxy resin. There was a huge reaction and my resin bubbled and spilled over the sides of my mold. That didn't work. After a few more unsuccessful attempts with other products, I finally ended up just casting them white and painting them with the acrylic paint. That worked pretty well. I need to shine them up a bit and make and install some labels, but otherwise I guess they turned out well enough. Not as nice as the originals but need a fairly close inspection to tell the lower quality.
Also aligned the broadcast band. It works nicely. I think soon, maybe tomorrow if I have time, I'm going to align the shortwave band and then call the chassis done.
April 13, 2006
Well, I wasn't sure if it would ever happen. But today I finished the chassis. It is working very well. I aligned all three bands with the help of my signal generator, frequency counter and VTVM. With that done, the broadcast band works as well as I'd expect from a 1939 radio, the police band is considerably perked up (not there's anything to listen to on it besides the shortwave stations in the 49M band at the high end) and I was able to receive 38 shortwave stations on the high band with only the 5' wire antenna attached to the chassis dangling down off the bench to the basement floor.
Then I programmed the six pushbuttons, an easy job that simply required turning a screw until the stations I wanted were coming in. The three original buttons that still remained were programmed to WTMJ, WMAQ (now WSCR, unfortunately) and WGN. I touched up their settings so they came in clearly (they were all out of alignment) and then programmed the others to WBBM, WSSP and WMCS. Then I made little labels on the computer for the three latter buttons and glued them on. They look pretty good, though obviously not original on close inspection. Still, for casual observers they look fine.
And that was that. It's sitting playing now. Now it goes off the bench to make room for other projects. Some day when I have time and space I'll bring the cabinet back and refinish it, a job equally difficult as restoring this chassis if not more so, and I'll have myself a nice console radio to display and use.
April 17
Picked up the cabinet from my brother today. Maybe I'll try to work on it over the next couple days/weeks as time permits.
I haven't taken a good hard look at it in a long while. In general it presents no serious problems and just a couple minor ones. For one, of course, it needs a refinishing. The lacquer has flaked off across much of the toned base and grille bars, and on some of the veneer. The veneer is nice and tight, and mostly in good condition. The major problem with the veneer is a dime-sized spot on the front of the left column where a piece has broken out. Hiding that promises to be a bit of a challenge. And two quarter-round molding pieces are missing from each side of the base right at the floor. This is not a very obvious spot, so if I can find something to match closely it should look good. And the button escutcheon is broken. Finding a replacement will be very difficult and this one doesn't look bad, so I'll just clean it, glue it back together and keep using it.
The cabinet sits on my front porch at the moment. I plan to haul another console off to the storage unit this week so this one can come in.
Good news when I went to retrieve the cabinet. The shorting plug for the phono jack that I thought I had lost, was inside it. Now I can clip out my soldered wire and use the shorting plug until I build a proper phono cable.
April 18
Pulled the parts and pieces off the cabinet for cleaning. I got a surprise from the escutcheons. They weren't solid plastic as I'd expected. Click here for a look. This button escutcheon was broken when I got the set.
I think this is pressed wood with photofinish over it. Cleaning with Go-Jo after this picture was taken revealed a very nice walnut burl pattern that does not exist on the back. There are a couple nicks here and there but nothing too obvious. I glued the escutcheon back together with Superglue.
It's obvious now how dirty the grille cloth was. It was glued to the cabinet itself, but not tightly and came off easily. It will be gently washed.
With any luck I may be able to strip the old finish off the cabinet soon.
April 20
Started stripping last night. I started with the top, and one problem which I was hoping to go away didn't. Which means I have to take further steps with this.
That's a water stain right on top. That means I'll have to use bleach to rid the cabinet of this problem.
Oxalic acid is a product that removes wood stains caused by iron and water. In other words, tap water stains. So I found a pint of oxalic acid crystals at the hardware store, brought it home and mixed a cup of it. Then I applied it to the stain and let it stand ten minutes. Wiped it off, and did it again. Then scrubbed off what was left with steel wool soaked in the stuff. Here are the results.
I've done a lot of stripping on this cabinet. So far all the veneered portions are done, along with small bits of the base. Remaining is the rest of the base and the grille bars, and the whole thing will have to be re-rinsed with lacquer thinner. But I'm tired from scrubbing, so I think I'm going to knock off for the night.
April 24
Stripping is done.
Also patched three spots where veneer is damaged. You can see two of them pretty clearly on the front of the left side. The third is at the back right corner of the top. Then I used the same walnut latex wood patch to fill the grain. I simply made a rag nice and damp, dipped it in the wood patch, and spread it all over the cabinet. Let dry for 20 minutes, and sand off with 150 grit paper. The wood patch stays behind in the grain and fills it. I credit Bill Meacham with sharing the technique; it's faster and much easier than traditional grain filling techniques.
Now I have to buy the 3/4" quarter round molding and some 3/4" plywood to rebuild the missing trim at the bottom of both sides of the cabinet. After I attach that I can refinish, and we'll be done here.
April 26
I bought some 3/4" quarter round molding (it happens to be oak, but by the time it's toned you'd never know it) and cut and ground it to fit, then glued it on. There are two strips per side. They were glued back-to-back, then the inside pieces were glued to the cabinet so that the curve on each outside piece extended the right length to meet with the corner trim.
Immediately after staining the veneer. My patch in front needs better blending. I'll be spraying a light coat of toner lacquer on the unstained softwood parts (the top corners, grille bars and base) and over all the stained portions to blend the colors together, so I should be able to do it then. Normally I don't use stain on a cabinet, but there was so much veneered flat area, and it is so difficult to color such panels evenly with spray toner, that it would look better to stain these and just blend the colors with a light coat of toner rather than try to use the toner to do all the coloring. It would end up blotchy, and I'd have to use too much toner to even it out, which would make the cabinet darker than I want. I want this cabinet a fairly medium walnut color without too much intensity. This stain isn't red enough anyway, so using the medium walnut toner will help bring it closer to the color I want.
April 28
The cabinet has been toned and topcoated with clear gloss lacquer. Not too bad for a rush job, as darkness was coming and rain has been predicted for the next few days. This needs to dry, then it can be rubbed out, then the set will be reassembled. We're getting close. I'm really looking forward to getting this one done.
April 29, 2006
It's done. The cabinet finish has been rubbed out and polished, and the radio reassembled into a complete whole unit.
Thirty months ago this unit, having survived as unloved and unwanted junk for years, traded hands in a Wisconsin parking lot on a chilly fall morning for just five dollars. And after more than two years of frustrating me, this Wells-Gardner model A12 console radio, has been restored to a very passable reflection of its former glory as an upper-middle-class 1930s radio. A rewarding, if challenging, project results in a radio I hope to enjoy for a long time. I hope it's worth more than $5 now....... :-)
Better pictures will be available once I can get it into enough light to photograph well.
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