Repair Of A 1932 Philco JR Model 81 Cathedral Tube radio

Comments · 98

• AR

  @armandcorpolongo · 7 years ago · pinned

  I've had several early Philco sets and it seems that all of them have had coil issues.  You did a nice job repairing the oscillator coil break.  Mine were usually broken in several locations because of the chemical reaction to the materials used to wrap the coil.  While it is a bit intimidating they really are simple to rewind and that prevents future breaks from occurring.  I found a good article on this and thought it might be helpful to you or others who run into this same issue.  Unfortunately it happens on the antenna, oscillator and RF coils because they used the same technique and materials on several early Philo models.  Thanks for sharing and posting.  Love the looks of the early Philco cathedrals but they can be a pain to restore.  https://www.philcorepairbench.com/rewinding-philco-rf-coils/

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• CR

  @CraneofBoulogne · 6 years ago

  I always learn things watching your videos.  You are straight forward and open and honest as you go through these repairs;  that makes for a much better learning experience for me.  Keep up the good work!

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• LA

  @ladamurni · 7 years ago

  Thank you for the upload, I always like watching your video's. Great feeling if you get the radio to work, I enjoyed it thank you.

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• BU

  @budandbean1 · 7 years ago

  Enjoyed the video and all your hard work and great explanations. I love these Philco‘s and actually have a 38-2 console waiting for restoration right now. This was a nice primer heading into that one. I always get a lot of super info from your running commentary, thank you. It’s great to see another radio come back to life.         Buddy

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• DA

  @danielsteele7544 · 7 years ago

  You did good,getting the old girl going,especially the coil repair was excellant. Most techs couldn't have done what you did.

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• RE

  @Rebel9668 · 7 years ago

  Hey, the fact that you got it to receive in itself is great!  I have an old highboy Philco model 18H that I currently have a tunable loop antenna hooked to and can only get our local station with it.  I was doing better with a long wire antenna and will probably go back to that this Spring when I feel like getting outdoors to run the wire. :)

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• WA

  @waynethompson8416 · 5 years ago

  I looked at this video again and something that might be of value to you is that I noticed when you were doing the adjustments on the bottom of the second band, you tuned to the low-frequency end of that band and made adjustments then changed to the upper-end frequency but when you made the adjustments you did so on the exact same device!  I think you should have been on the one above it.

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• BA

  @Backtothefutureradios · 7 years ago (edited)

  Hey nice repair job on the coil! Those are a pain, I believe #36 gauge wire. I have found that a lot of those Philcos have coil issues! Seems like the wire corrodes and becomes brittle in several locations. You are lucky to find the break and be able to repair it. I worked on a model 84 that had a corroded broken coil. I ended up rewinding it. Wasnt hard, but had to do it under a magnifier! I used double sided tape to keep the wire from unwinding on me. If you would like to see how I did it, its in my Philco 84 video Part 4. Thanks for letting us watch this repair! Looks like not many folks has been there before you! Take Care--Larry. Addition: I had trouble aligning the 84. It is a regenerative receiver simular to the 81. Take a look at Note 1 on your alignment procedure about the regenerative adjustment (sensitivity) #8 adjustment on the far right on the back. This controls the amount of signal that is fed back into the circuit. As you know, too much and it will squeal or feedback. Hope you can tweak this one to the point of decent performance. These were not a great performer in the day!!! Take Care--Larry

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• SE

  @senorcapitandiogenes2068 · 7 years ago

  I wish I could find more tube radios. Not that there arent any around where I live but people have no idea what they are worth. A radio from the 50s, field coil a mess of cut wires, speaker had no paper left in its cone, missing one of three tubes, power cable completely in shreds. The seller insisted that "It worked this morning" even though we have absolutely no AM stations in my country anymore and it was an AM only radio. His asking price was 70 Euros. Ofc non-negociable

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• JO

  @joecarson8281 · 7 years ago

  I had the same bad coil issue on a radio, but I rewound it and it works today. That job is not for the faint of heart. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and skills.

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• PA

  @PaulHigginbothamSr · 6 years ago

  Thank you for showing this video. In high school I had a bunch of these old radios. What happens is this is a later revision and the alignment procedure is for the first ones. What I found was I had to think about the entire project and when a turn of the tuning for a coil did nothing to do something slightly out of step with which coil to align next. The coils have to be tuned so they are synergistic to each other and I am saying this radio will do a ton better. Probably a tube malfunction would be my first guess, or a tube pin dirty. It will do much better I just don't know how to waste less time because just listening to the hum means a resistor is out of spec making the circuit go out of heterodyning. I'm old now so do what you think best.

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• TE

  @tectalabyss · 7 years ago

  Great job. Looking forward to more. Liked,Shared and added to Playlists.<br>All my best.<br>Bobby

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