A Silvertone 4588 Has Arrived Here
Posts: 309
Threads: 55
Joined: Oct 2011
City: Claremont, NH
I was fortunate enough to find this great Silvertone 4588 with the mirror dial on CL this week. Picked it up on Friday, and have given it a cleaning with GOJO. Looks like a trim piece is missing on the bottom center, some small pieces of the banded thin inlay are gone. Dial is in nice condition with no cracks or breaks. 4 bands using 13 tubes. I don't think these tube shields look correct, and some are missing. It has a phono input plug which is part of the speaker wiring. And there is a badly burned resistor under the chassis with one disconnected wire. It got real hot as there is charring on the baseboard. This is another of my "holy grail" sets that I didn't actually think I would be able to find.
[Image: http://i1185.photobucket.com/albums/z345.../4588e.jpg]
[Image: http://i1185.photobucket.com/albums/z345.../4588f.jpg]
[Image: http://i1185.photobucket.com/albums/z345.../4588d.jpg]
[Image: http://i1185.photobucket.com/albums/z345.../4588b.jpg]
[Image: http://i1185.photobucket.com/albums/z345.../4588a.jpg]
[Image: http://i1185.photobucket.com/albums/z345.../4588g.jpg]
Gene
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City: MS, USA
Great find! I'm sure it will be a great performer when restored.
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City: Clayton, NC
A neat set! How do you like the "flash" tuning feature?
Silvertone came up with some neat features. This set features P-PP 6N6s driven by 6C5s. Very cool!!
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City: Dover, OH
Very nice looking set!
No matter where you go, there you are.
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City: Atlantic Highlands, NJ
Very nice. Was that in the Roanoke area? I saw one listed there the other day.
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City: Sandwick, BC, CA
Are those diagonal strips of wood only braces or did the set have a baffle of some kind behind the speaker? The ground clips on the chassis make it look like the tubes were intended to use "Goat" shields, the metal tube and the GT style tube are wrong of course. I noticed that the broadcast band stops at a point just past 1500 kc, so to get the upper end of the broadcast band you would have to switch over to the Police band, sort of like a Philco 60, between 1.7 MC and 3.5 MC that band is virtually a dead zone. As is often the case on sets from this era the spread on the shortwave bands isn't that great, not too bad at the lower end but a little crowded at the top end. It is a very nice set for a department store radio, was it made by Colonial or did Stewart Warner make this set for Sears?
Regards
Arran
Posts: 309
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City: Claremont, NH
SteveJB,
The set was here in New Hampshire where I live. It was a 2 1/2 hr drive one way to get it.
Arran,
I believe the wood strips are cabinet reinforcement strips. The speaker is on an inclined sounding board similar to Philco's. I consider this to be a very well constructed cabinet which was obviously built to last.
I would be interested to verify that the tube shields were supposed to be goat shields, are you making this determination by the shape of the supports? Since I have no radios that use them I would like to know.
If you use an in home transmitter it really doesn't matter if there are any "dead" bands, you play what you like.
I would imagine in 1937 that no one was considering what frequencies would still be in use in 2013, let alone that the actual radio would still be here. AND at that time a large number of radios were sold by the various department stores since that is where most people did their shopping.
I have absolutely no idea who manufactured this particular radio for Sears. Perhaps some of the other members who have this knowledge could chime in here.
What I do know is that I have been looking for this particular radio and it presented itself to me, so I purchased it and am extremely happy with it.
Gene
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Joined: Sep 2011
City: moline, il
Hi Gene-Nice set !!
You probably know this but the actual set maker is coded in the chassis model number. Its the 3 digit at the beginning, such as 100 or 101 etc.
Colonial is the most common maker and i think they were 101 although there were about 20 companies who supplied Sears, including Zenith.
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City: Shepherdsville, KY
Hi Gene
That is a nice looking set, glad you got it. That looks like a hefty speaker, bet it will sound good.  Joe
Joe Bratcher near Louisville, KY
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City: Claremont, NH
TA Forbes,
I read about the flash tuning, but have not powered this up yet. There is a burned resistor under the chassis. And yes that toothed metal piece is pretty flimsy so I know you have to be careful not to bend that up when working on the set.
y2kbruce,
No, I wasn't aware of how you could determine the maker. Thanks for that info! I will see what I can find on this chassis.
w4rtc,
Yes, that speaker does have some weight to it. I removed it to clean it and the soundboard to clean the grille cloth. This is the first radio I have seen that uses SCREWS to hold the speaker in place instead of studs with nuts.
I have now found two other pictures of this model, they both have goat tube shields, so Arran is correct on that. Now I will need to locate some of those to put it back the way it should be.
Thanks to everyone for the kind comments!
Gene
(This post was last modified: 01-07-2013, 10:28 AM by Gene Pederson.)
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City: Shepherdsville, KY
Hi Gene
What are goat sheilds  ?
Joe
Joe Bratcher near Louisville, KY
Posts: 309
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Joined: Oct 2011
City: Claremont, NH
Hi Joe,
If you look at the picture of the back of the set, the 4th tube in on the right hand side has a "goat" shield on it. These are a kind of form fitting shield as opposed to the round or rectangular ones you usually see.
You put the two sides together and there is a metal ring that friction fits around the whole thing to keep it in place.
Gene
Posts: 594
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Joined: Aug 2010
City: Shepherdsville, KY
Ok
I have one set (2pcs) they are yours if you want them. Let know and I will send them to you. They do not have the ring. Just the two sides. Joe
Joe Bratcher near Louisville, KY
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Gene
Very nice indeed! Congratulations!
--
Ron Ramirez
Ferdinand IN
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City: Sandwick, BC, CA
I don't think that this set was made by brand Z, the speaker looks a lot like a Rola and I don't think brand Z used those. The dial reminds me of some Sparton sets from the 1937 model year, though not quite as elaborate, I doubt whether Sparks Withington made this set however. Sears-Roebuck owned Colonial by then so the bulk of their Silvertone sets were made by Colonial, some by Stewart Warner, and others by Belmont. I noticed that there are windows in the dial with a label for each band printed on green celluloid (or maybe it's on the glass?), I wonder if those light up in sequence with the position of the band switch?
Hopefully you can find a good picture of that missing molding, or someone who has one, to make a replica of it. It looks like it was in a vulnerable position should someone tilt the cabinet forward so I'm sure that this isn't the first time that molding became detached.
Regards
Arran
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