11-24-2018, 09:33 PM
I've been enjoying the holiday weekend by devoting some time to my Model 15X (June 1932).
I haven't run into anything too surprising but I thought I'd post some pics and notes from what I found since they might also be useful to anyone working on one in the future.
As usual before starting I tried to read over as many prior Model 15 restoration threads as possible - and had an especially good read of bandersen's 15DX thread - a great starting point to compare against.
I've seen that some 15X radios have a black fiber board back of later Philco. My 15X still has the wood / woven back that I've seen previously on the Model 112X (Jan 1932) that I worked on previously so I assume some time in 1932 was the changeover.
My 15X is one of the early production models with a hard-wired speaker harness. Awkward!
I ended up removing the speaker board and desoldered the harness initially. That was fine until the first power-up when I just ended up resoldering after protecting the speaker board with cardboard and balancing them on top of the chassis. I can see why Philco added a plug in later runs!
It seems like every K-12 speaker I've seen has rust on it. This one actually isn't too bad. I wonder if it has something to do with the cloth glued to it attracting moisture? The H-7 speaker below it is practically rust-free.
Here's the chassis as pulled. Dusty and some moderate amount of rust:
The bottom of the chassis looks quite a bit cleaner:
I haven't run into anything too surprising but I thought I'd post some pics and notes from what I found since they might also be useful to anyone working on one in the future.
As usual before starting I tried to read over as many prior Model 15 restoration threads as possible - and had an especially good read of bandersen's 15DX thread - a great starting point to compare against.
I've seen that some 15X radios have a black fiber board back of later Philco. My 15X still has the wood / woven back that I've seen previously on the Model 112X (Jan 1932) that I worked on previously so I assume some time in 1932 was the changeover.
My 15X is one of the early production models with a hard-wired speaker harness. Awkward!
I ended up removing the speaker board and desoldered the harness initially. That was fine until the first power-up when I just ended up resoldering after protecting the speaker board with cardboard and balancing them on top of the chassis. I can see why Philco added a plug in later runs!
It seems like every K-12 speaker I've seen has rust on it. This one actually isn't too bad. I wonder if it has something to do with the cloth glued to it attracting moisture? The H-7 speaker below it is practically rust-free.
Here's the chassis as pulled. Dusty and some moderate amount of rust:
The bottom of the chassis looks quite a bit cleaner: