The PHILCO Phorum

Hi all:  Here goes another “Bing Crosby” Philco 46-1201 restoration.  I picked up mine about 2 months ago and it was in terrible shape!  It was full of sand and dirt and someone had painted the whole thing with a sickening green house paint complete with sags and dust nibs.  I took the entire unit to bits and stripped off the terrible paint job.  Unfortunately the stripping took off the rather nice faux grain finish that Philco had.  I finished the sides with many coats of dark walnut toning lacquer and stained the front and top with red mahogany stain.  Then the whole cabinet got about 8 coats of semi-gloss spray lacquer.Then I turned to the record player.  It was so rusty that I decided to take all the mechanical parts off, then I sanded the deck surface and sprayed it a bright red.  Now I know that no one will see the deck once it is assembled but I love red and I’ll know it’s there!  I sprayed the record positioning assy a flat black and re-assembled it.  I overhauled the motor and idler assy.  The motor was in pretty good shape and the idler still has good grip!  Not bad for a 68 year old machine.  The cartridge was bad but rather than have it rebuilt I installed a ceramic stereo cartridge wired for mono.  I thought it would not put out enough signal but in testing with the radio it was fine.  The mercury switch assembly had some pieces broken off and missing so I opted to remove that assembly and mount a micro switch that turns on when the door is closed.  If I ever find the right parts I may restore the shut off to original.  Next I turned my attention to the radio chassis.  I recapped it and I was eager to get rid of the outboard resistor assembly.  So I subbed a 50L6 tube and installed a 22R resistor under the chassis.  That took care of the filaments then I put in an 82R resistor in the B+ line which upped the B+ voltage to about 130 volts.  Then I discarded the resistor pack.  The 7watt pilot bulb had burned the dial diffuser so I replaced it with a piece of plexiglass which I sanded to make opaque.  Then I took an old LED flashlight pc assembly and rewired it from parallel to series and installed a rectifier and dropping resistor.  Except for the subbed 50L6 all the tubes tested okay and the radio plays fine.  It’s now basically finished and back together.  The only exception is the turntable.  I have tried reflocking it but I am not satisfied.  I may try the trick of applying high voltage to the just painted turntable and sifting the flocking on.  I’ve heard that works well.  I have acquired quite a few 78’s including a Bing Crosby western album.  It’s no hi-fi but I have loved the experience of the restoration and I’m enjoying using it.

Great job for sure.

A few more pix of the unit showing the unrestored unit and the almost finished condition and the LED assembly I used
The original grill cloth was a disgusting mess so I had to discard it.  At first I thought my only reasonable choice was to use the generic black grill cloth and I didn't like the idea of that.  Then I found some dark brown grill cloth rescued from an old organ.  I had my doubts about that too until I installed it.  It may not look original but I think it looks great.
Thanks for viewing.

The only thing, you should not open a new thread for it, you need to add pcs to the original thread.

Okay, I guess it's just my inexperience with the site

+1 what Mike (morzh) said. I have merged the two threads into one since both were on the same subject.

Thanks Ron for cleaning that up for me!