Quote:
Originally Posted by high_vacuum_house
A very long time ago (more than 30 years ago) I completely destroyed a small Philips 50’s Bakelite radio which was my grandparents table radio. It was VHF/MW with no LW and was permeability tuned with ferrite cores moving up and down on a Bakelite snail rather than the usual variable capacitor. I managed to dismantle every part of it. Every coil was unwound, every valve was opened and dissected and even the smoothing electrolytic capacitors was unravelled. It certainly got me interested in valve radios.
A year or 2 ago I found an identical model to the one I destroyed and to make amends I fully restored it.
Christopher Capener
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I did much the same with my parents' KB Rhapsody, and a radio that had belonged to my grandparents that I found in our shed, out of curiosity – this got me started messing with radios. To be fair, the KB had already suffered a fall from the table with the result that the case and ferrite rod were broken warranting a replacement set.
I then became a repository for unwanted radios, and in one instance a radiogram, from all and sundry. I dread to think how many vintage sets I stripped for parts 'that might be useful'. Some of those parts are still waiting to be used but the tuning capacitors, especially the nice Jackson ones, and especially if there was a nice slow-motion or cord drive assembly, found their way into many projects. Some are still in the shack. However, four vanity case models survived intact. I'd arrived at the point where I appreciated them as items and thus thought them too nice to strip. One that arrived fault-free with a lovely tone served me several years as a bedroom radio. I have fond memories listening to Luxembourg and RNI on it. I ran it from a variable voltage PSU and I trained my mother in how to turn it off when I had fallen asleep!
As for my parents' KB, I finally found the exact same Rhapsody last year and it's in the queue.
I wasn't much of a vandal. The only thing I remember deliberately hurling rocks at was an old TV to see what happened to the CRT. Once was enough. I think I must have always had a 'retain old stuff' gene as I'm mostly surrounded by old stuff...