[rworne]

Hello, new member here.

I purchased a restored 39-6 from someone who supposedly specializes in radio restorations. It was my first purchase, so I guess I should live and learn. Once I got it home, I was able to pop it out of the chassis to look it over.

I looked up the specifics of the radio and found it online. It turns out the person doing the restoring did a heroic effort on a radio that may have been better off parted out.

In a nutshell, this is what I saw:
1. The chassis is mounted directly on the wood cabinet, no rubber spacers. Because of this the dial looks slightly low.
2. The speaker was severely damaged. While it works, it distorts at high volumes due to the repair - it looks like RTV was used to repair a quarter-sized tear in the cone. There was also an unrepaired crack. Since the speaker repair used RTV (why?), I figured why not and used a small dab to stop it from getting any worse. It sounds much better now.
3. The dial needle is not original, or one of the needles has broken off. Basically it needs replacing.
4. The cabinet was re-veneered. *facepalm*

On the good side, the radio was electronically restored: recapped and it is clean inside with good tubes. The dial does not fully crank over to the highest frequency, it tops off at about 1550KHz. Sounds strong and clean.

So basically, I'm looking for certain parts to get it into more tip-top shape. A replacement speaker, rubber standoffs, and a dial needle would be a good start.

I found the rubber parts, but I do not know the sizes. I can also get another dial "lens" online, but this model did not have a metal bezel.

Anyone with tips on where I can get the parts I need?

[Radioroslyn]

Good Morning and Welcome to the Phorum!
Well it's morning it Philly now. I would buy a parts set from you know where. It's a pretty common set so it should be too difficult to find one. Also you could post in the wanted section of the phourm.
Terry

[rworne]

Hello,

Thanks, but I do not know yet the "who" because I'm too me here. I found someone with rubber parts online, but not the other items.

[Radioroslyn]

That would be ebay.
Terry

[klondike98]

Welcome to the Phorum. In case you haven't found it, there is a good list of resources on this site at: http://www.philcoradio.com/resourceb.htm and another at http://www.philcorepairbench.com/links.htm . You may just have to wait until a listing comes up on ebay. Keep an eye on your local craigslist too.

[rworne]

Thanks again.

Any idea on the tuner issue? 640 and 1500 are spot on. It just won't go much more than 1500-1550.

[Mondial]

Does the dial pointer indicate higher than 1550, or does it mechanically stop before reaching 1700?

To me, its sounds like a case of poor mechanical adjustment and RF alignment. When you turn the tuning control to the stop at the low freq end of the dial, the pointer should be perfectly horizontal and aligned with the lines on the dial.

[rworne]

It mechanically stops. It's perfectly horizontal on the low end. On the high end is the problem. The tuning dial still turns, but it simply will not move past that point. I was beginning to think I might have a mix & match radio, but the tuning needle is perfectly tacking the stations with the dial scale.

I figured if it was a different tuner, it would be be out of scale - that is if it were tuned to 640 exactly, it would not linearly track all the frequencies. I hope that make sense. But in this case, 640 and 1500 are dead-on when looking at the dial.

[BrendaAnnD]

Sounds like you have a physical blockage at the tuner that is keeping it from moving the full range. This could be something that has fallen into the plates or a wire or some such blocking the dial drum from moving farther. It's also possible that the dial string is getting wound on top of itself at the tuning shaft. At any rate, it's likely something very simple.

[rworne]

Brenda:

You are correct. Since I do not have a lot of experience with these I was loathe to mess with it much, but I did check the tuning mechanism and see this:

It turns nearly all the way to the physical stop. Then the dial string slips on the shaft of the tuning knob. The string is fairly taut, but that is the problem. A quick check online and some proposed fixes were posted. I tried one and the radio now tunes the full band, thanks!

[Arran]

I've never seen a satisfactory speaker repair using silicone, it's usually smeared on in a gob and at some point detaches itself from the cone causing a rattle. In my opinion silicon is best used for caulking around a bathtub not speaker repairs. I prefer to use something else like general purpose contact cement or even the clear glue from a glue pen.
Regards
Arran

[Warren]

When i was young and in a band, I have used nail polish to glue the crack together which seemed to work well, the speaker sounded good with no rattles. Only problem i can think of is it isnt very pliable so im not sure if it would last for years, although it might.

[rworne]

In the end, I'm going to have it reconed. I looked it over when I had it put fixing the tuner and the tear was actually a semicircle covering about 20-25% of the cone area.

I'm just waiting for my other radio to come in so I can do a comparison. It's got the same chassis as the 39-6.

[Pappy B]

I have had good luck with pliobond and rubber cement for glue and pieces of a coffee filter for smaller holes. I repaired to speaker cones on a Grundig that were in terrible shape by using pieces of cone cut out of a non working Grundig speaker. They aren't pretty but it gets played every day and sometimes at a fairly loud volume. It sounds great. Running the small braided wire through tiny holes in the cone and gluing them are a challenge. Being desperate will make you find skills you don't know you have.