05-24-2015, 08:34 PM
Ok, that sounds silly, but it's basically what I did. I am finally able to get to my 38-116 for the first time since my friend passed away last October and I decided to play it some this evening. After fiddling with the dial light (I think the socket is flakey), it played fine for about five minutes until I got an annoying buzz or rattle in the speaker. Of course, this really did not make my day as there is no way to recone one of these beasts back to the way Philco made them with the dual paper types! Anyways, I pulled the speaker, sweating bullets because I know we used the old speaker repair cement on this unit before we discovered it was warping and destroying speaker cones. Well, it did warp a tiny bit at the edge where the repairs were made, but not terribly. Now, what was wrong? I could hear something crunching around the voice coil when I gently worked the spider up and down. Hmm, what to do? Well, in an odd fit, I flipped the speaker over in my left hand, with the opposite edge propped on my knee to avoid the cone, then commenced to take my right hand and slap the back of the speaker frame behind the magnet where it is the most solid! Dust, and debris fell out of the speaker and then, TWO DEAD LADY BUGS! Yep, there were two dead lady bugs stuck in the voice coil! Put the speaker back into the radio and it played great for the half hour I listened to it until the station went to a game. Either that was the issue or the speaker decided to play after the bit of disiplining! 
