Phil's Old Radios | Hacker News Reader

Phil's Old Radios

antiqueradio.org

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About 4 years ago I picked up an old tube radio I found at an antique mall that caught my eye. The radio was a 1947 AM/FM set. Before finding it, I had no idea that FM radio was even around in 1947, but it was. It was a relatively new technology at the time, so this would have probably been a high-end set when it was introduced.

Buying that radio led me down the path of learning how to restore old tube radios, and I eventually got it all fixed up and working - it's currently sitting on a bookshelf behind me.

It's very strange to hear modern music coming through it what with it's old art-deco styling. Sometimes I think about who the original owner must have been and what they probably listened to on it. Old jazz and rock and roll songs maybe? News updates on the Korean War? Who knows. But it's interesting to think about...

1947? Probably a lot of radio dramas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_drama#1930–1960s:_Widesp...

My dad, who grew up in the 40s and 50s, has mentioned before that they treated the radio just like the "family TV" of the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

NPR affiliate WAMU airs The Big Broadcast every Sunday evening, with 4 hours of programming from the golden age of radio: https://wamu.org/show/the-big-broadcast/ I've always loved listening while cooking dinner. Though, living on the west coast I only get to listen to the tail end of the show.

FM was in development in the 1930's, but was reallocated a couple of times. The current allocation of 88-108MHz was put into place in 1945. It took a long time for FM to catch on. It wasn't until the late 1970's that a majority of the listening public had an FM radio, especially youth. The pivot of youth listening from AM Top 40 to FM happened within a decade.

The Internet Archive has a lot of old radio programs [1] and newer ones as well [2, 3]. When I wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble getting back to sleep, I sometimes listen to the 1949 World Series between the New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers [4].

I thought I was immune to nostalgia for obsolete technology, but those photos of old radios brought a lump to my throat. Radio may have been the closest thing we had to the Internet before we had the Internet.

[1] https://archive.org/details/oldtimeradio

[2] https://archive.org/details/radio

[3] https://archive.org/details/radioprograms

[4] https://archive.org/details/classicmlbbaseballradio

CBS Radio Mystery Theater is from the 70s, but was made to be nostalgic to the 30s.. I remember listening to this on AM 880 CBS from NYC..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAkiql1PhV4&list=PLdoGrEj2tN...

A good show is Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar: "the transcribed adventures of the man with the action-packed expense account – America's fabulous freelance insurance investigator."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRDdcaRHcoM&list=PLneoVXdPCz...

> It's very strange to hear modern music coming through it what with it's old art-deco styling. Sometimes I think about who the original owner must have been and what they probably listened to on it. Old jazz and rock and roll songs maybe? News updates on the Korean War? Who knows. But it's interesting to think about...

Another reason why open standards and are so important. If you have a recording, I'd say the same about the reason we should not be so lax with DRM.

I remember a friend of mine telling me how he lost a bunch of animations he had done on Corel MOVE! Corel simply didn't support their own format after version 5 from 1996. He gave up waiting, couldn't find older Corel versions and deleted the files. In 2012 an open source parser appeared: http://cmvparser.sourceforge.net/

> It's very strange to hear modern music coming through it what with it's old art-deco styling.

You don't happen to have a picture? I'd love to see it!

It's a Truetone D2819, made by Western Auto Supply Company. Here's a page with some photos (not of my radio, but of one just like it):

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/western_au_d2819_truetone_ch_2...

The whole history of Western Auto is kind of an interesting story. They started in 1909, diversified into things other than auto parts (like radios), and then through a series of acquisitions over the years, ended up finally being bought by Advance Auto Parts in the 90s, who now owns the IP AFAIK:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Auto

In due time this will - sadly - come to an end. DAB+ is taking over FM (at least in Europe) and brick many beautifully working old radio sets.

I doubt it in the USA. Digital radio has been around for a while, but has never taken off. I hope it stays that way. One could hack together a DAB to FM converter that gangs onto the radio dial for tuning.

Someone on /r/BudgetAudiophile/ posted that they'd picked up a Tivoli Audio Model One, and in the comments, someone mentioned the "KLH 21". I'd never heard of that, so I searched for it on DDG and a page on this site was the first result:

https://antiqueradio.org/KLHModelTwentyOne21FMRadio.htm

Somewhat related: A few weeks back, I watched The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. The movie features a pretty unique looking turntable in several scenes. It took me a little while to track down that it's a Braun Audio 310[1][2]. I think I found it by doing an image search for "turntable record player 1970 Germany" or some such and then just started scrolling through image after image of record player. It turns out its a turntable and radio combination.

[1] https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/braun_audio_310.html

[2] https://braunaudio.de/en/braun-audio-310-dieter-rams-design-...

Interesting factoid: Braun's electronics were the biggest inspiration for Apple's products. Compare a radio or their calculator: https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/tumblr_..., https://cdn.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/digital...

Anyone interested in this kind of thing should read Early Wireless by A R Constable. He was also the founding member of the British Vintage wireless Society.

https://www.bvws.org.uk/

Paul Carlson of Mr. Carlson's Lab (Youtube and Patreon) is a consummate expert at this sort of restoration, preservation and analysis of old designs if you want to watch it happen.

I second this whole-heartedly. I grew up in the hollow-state era when solid-state discrete devices were relatively new. Mr. Carlson’s Lab is a great show. Paul really knows his stuff.

I wish he would do more troubleshooting. He replaces all the tubes, all the caps, all the resistors, and now the radio magically works!

You exaggerate. He replaces bad tubes and keeps the rest. He rarely replaces resistors; old carbon resistors are very durable and some resistors should not be replaced without good reason, such as those in instruments. He aggressively replaces paper caps and lectures about exactly why these have to go rather than indulging foolish nostalgia (they turn into resistors which overloads grids which melts irreplaceable transformers while starting a house fire.) Mica caps and most ceramics are tested and left alone. And he doesn't leave the function of the device to "magic." The design and operation of the circuit is analyzed; the first thing you see after an intro usually a circuit schematic.

It is astonishing how people perceive things.

The idea of someone unironically having a vacuum tube radio repair-related bone to pick with Paul Carlson is just funny. He should make detailed reaction videos where he shit-talks Paul for his poor technique, lack of electronics knowledge, and inauthenticity.

I'd much rather watch Uncle Doug resurrect old guitar amps.

Doug’s a legit craftsman. His scratch builds are second to none. His video on phase inverters was also a game changer for me as a young builder.

He's probably the best for absolute beginners in terms of learning what to do to avoid killing yourself with the high voltages involved. But there are quite a lot of youtube creators doing this kind of thing, you can learn something from each of them:

Shango066: He impressively resurrects radios and TV that have been left out in the desert for 60+ years and is the best at troubleshooting. I learned that exploring mines is a thing from this guy, definitely check out his mine explore videos.

David Tipton: he restores the electronics yes, but I'm impressed with the chassis restoration work. He uses a lot of modern tools, like 3d print replacement knobs or create new labels.

Electronics Old and New by M Caldeira: He restores European radios from his home in Madeira. He has a cool technique of tracing schematics.

D-lab Electronics: convert old radios into guitar amps!

Glasslinger: he makes his own vacuum tubes! I like his restorations of very early radios.

W2AEW: because at some point you need to learn how to use a smith chart to design complex impedance matching circuits..

Lovely to see an old-timey site like this.This is a great example of 'digital gardening'. Just putting information out there and slowly improving things over time.

You can tell that the site owner cares about presentation and uniqueness, even for such a niche topic. I love that the page titles are simple typographic image files with alt text.

It's a shame that informational single-topic websites like this have mostly gone the way of the dodo. The modern sites that attempt to do something like this are usually just content marketing efforts for some SaaS product.

This is what the net was supposed to be.

Agreed. Tim Berners-Lee bless the collectors and the archivists.

Whenever I see simple sites likes this I'm filled with nostalgia. And, joy that someone puts love and effort into making their passion project available to the world.

A labor of love like few others:

http://www.dogstar.dantimax.dk/

Fred Nachbaur's website.

I would suggest watching some Bob Andersen old radio restoration projects to see how old radios evolved. Some projects go into double digit number of episodes so one needs some time to digest them. Apart from electronics, Bob does cosmetic restorations too.

https://www.youtube.com/user/bandersentv

IANAEE (electrical engineer), but I do some antique radio collecting. When you work with computers, memory chips, all that, your instinct is to be grounded. I read that the opposite is true when working on old radios. When you're ground, you can get all of 110 volts going through you. From the "All American Five" wikipedia page, "The standard line up of tubes were designed so that the total rated voltage of the five tubes was 121 volts, slightly more than the electricity supply voltage of 110-117V. An extra dropper resistor was therefore not required. Transformerless designs had a metal chassis connected to one side of the power line, which was a dangerous electric shock hazard and required a thoroughly insulated cabinet." An isolation transformer is your friend if you work on them.

For those who enjoy radio construction and repair, whether vintage or modern, from crystal sets to SDR through regenerative and superhets, take a look at The Radioboard forums. http://theradioboard.com/rb/

If you enjoy this website, you will probably enjoy Jeri Ellsworth's visit to the Museum of Radio and Technology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyZ87wNotBg

Early Television Museum:

https://youtu.be/4YGdoib7S9k

Vintage radios have a weird time these days because the people (typically: men) who used to have experienced them as young child's are dying. As a consequence, prices are dropping and massive amounts of radios are trashed. Why? Because their collections are resolved by their heirs.

For instance, rare radios where about 2000€ in the 1980s and are around 200€ nowadays.

That's true of rare things in general. They get more expensive and desirable as they get rarer, then they cross a threshold where they become so rare that they become little known and demand goes away. (My dad had a car like this.)

I think there is a reason why you regularly see stories about rare things being auctioned for record prices: it's an part of the publicity campaign to increase public awareness, thus maintaining demand for those rare things.

That hasn't quite happened yet with Ham Radio, I have a friend I help from time to time who does a LOT of repair work on Collins, Hallicrafters, etc. There are still enough hams around collecting the stuff to keep it worth repairing them. I'd guess that purge is coming to get the boat anchors in about 10 years.

I've learned a lot about repairing them from him, but playing with more than 12 volts scares the bejeezus out of me.

Cool stuff. I've been getting into tube amps lately and there's some overlap between audiophiles and radio/tv restorers in that we're all after the same dwindling supply of vintage vacuum tubes. The 6DJ8 tube used in many tube amplifiers was originally made for color television tuners.

When this radio site was new I was just getting on the internet with Windows 95 and had been working with my surplus tubes and vintage guitar amps.

I never stopped using tubes completely, even studied electronics young when tubes were still all there was for beginners. Transistors were only for one advanced senior classman at the beginning, they were too expensive for mainstream use and too easy to burn out.

Nobody batted an eye about the high voltage for a pre-teen though, that's all there had ever been in the mainstream.

In the '90's vintage guitars had already skyrocketed in value and classic amps were then starting to rise faster, but NOS tubes even faster than that.

Especially after Ebay came out.

So I had to get a few new ones, like it says on the Silvertine box "for that new-set sparkle!"

Clicking through some of those pictures, I swear I can smell some of them!

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