10-12-2015, 02:06 PM
Hello all! I joined up as this seems to be a great resource for Philco radios.
I found my Philco at an antique consignment shop my friends and I were browsing Saturday. Did not know the first thing about it, except I did like the style, and at $20 my friend talked me into it. Figured I couldn't lose. What you see is what I got, a cabinet that has seen better days, and no guts. My plan is to restore the outside to original spec, should be a challenge as I've never done woodworking before. There are also several gouges in the woodwork that need to be repaired and the veneer is lifting on the edges. So I'll be cruising this site to gather tips and tricks to repair the damage. As far as the guts, this may be sacrilege, but since the tuner and whatnot is long gone, I plan on building an Audrino to stream music from a server on my home network. This will include a graphical LCD display installed behind the radio dial and programmed to display song info, etc, fit to the curved dial. My friend owns a 3d printer business and has all the electronics and know-how on that front, and will be teaching me to setup one. It can also be programmed to display weather and time when sitting idle. Should be pretty slick. I then found on the net DIY vacuum tube amplifiers for 200, pricey but should give an appropriate sound to match the looks of the set. I plan to install switches with the original knobs to control all the functions of the system, but since it's network connected I can control it with a phone or computer. I plan on doing all this with as little mods to the cabinet as possible, should be easily doable.
Here's my new project:
[Image: http://i1345.photobucket.com/albums/p665...4qoyqd.jpg]
Thanks for reading and I look forward to this project!
I found my Philco at an antique consignment shop my friends and I were browsing Saturday. Did not know the first thing about it, except I did like the style, and at $20 my friend talked me into it. Figured I couldn't lose. What you see is what I got, a cabinet that has seen better days, and no guts. My plan is to restore the outside to original spec, should be a challenge as I've never done woodworking before. There are also several gouges in the woodwork that need to be repaired and the veneer is lifting on the edges. So I'll be cruising this site to gather tips and tricks to repair the damage. As far as the guts, this may be sacrilege, but since the tuner and whatnot is long gone, I plan on building an Audrino to stream music from a server on my home network. This will include a graphical LCD display installed behind the radio dial and programmed to display song info, etc, fit to the curved dial. My friend owns a 3d printer business and has all the electronics and know-how on that front, and will be teaching me to setup one. It can also be programmed to display weather and time when sitting idle. Should be pretty slick. I then found on the net DIY vacuum tube amplifiers for 200, pricey but should give an appropriate sound to match the looks of the set. I plan to install switches with the original knobs to control all the functions of the system, but since it's network connected I can control it with a phone or computer. I plan on doing all this with as little mods to the cabinet as possible, should be easily doable.
Here's my new project:
[Image: http://i1345.photobucket.com/albums/p665...4qoyqd.jpg]
Thanks for reading and I look forward to this project!
