Need some techinical advise. Picked up a Model 95 about 20 years ago - worked fine but the speaker cone continued to get worse. About 7 years a ago it gave it up completely.
so my question - where can I get a replacement speaker and whats the impedance that I need to match - I suspect the today's standard of 8 ohms is not the answer.....
Any help or suggustions would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to get it working again. We just moved into a 107 year old house and I'd like the radio to be a working part of the living room.
You often see correct speakers for your radio in eBay. Also recommend you post a wanted ad here.
Another option is to just have the speaker re-coned. It is always surprising to see how improved these old speakers are with a modern cone system.
Hi
The Model 95 originally used a Philco type G speaker - 3200 ohm field coil, push-pull output transformer, 0.7 ohm voice coil impedance. This speaker is also used in Models 65, 76, 87.
Speakers from the following models will also work, but you will have to replace the speaker plug with the large type as used in your set:
77, 96, 111, 112
A 112 speaker will sound the best due to the open-type spider used inside the voice coil, allowing for greater flexibility and, hence, better overall fidelity.
Thanks TA - what's the cost of getting it reconed - and do y'all suggust anyone?
Thanks Ron that's some great info. ball park what I expect to pay for a replacement speaker?
Probably $20-50 for a good replacement speaker.
For just a bit more than that, you can have your original reconed. There are several companies that offer this service. Here's just one shop offering this service, that has a very good reputation among fellow collectors:
http://www.thespeakershop.com/speakerrepair.html
Before you go rushing off to either buy a replacement speaker or have the original reconed, has this set been electrically overhauled yet?
Regards
Arran
Thanks Ron - I'll most likely go down the recone path....
Arran - when I first bought it I blew out the dust, checked all the connections underneith looking for any obvious bad stuff and turned it on and it worked. I'm almost afraid to ask what you mean by electrically overhauled....... but I guess I should....
My friend who works on radios has always complained about what he calls the hard as rock paper cones in Philcos from that era. He is right, though it's probably more the spider design. It seems odd, I rarely see one of these speakers with a rotted or torn cone, but the cones are so tight that they barely move!
If you intend to play this set then it should be re-capped and the resistors checked to verify they are within tolerance of value.
The 95 has a filter bank located in a rectangular can on top of the chassis. This should be re-stuffed with modern compnents. Sometimes they come apart easily, sometimes they don't.
The resistor color code on these early sets is irrelevant with respect to the modern one. So you have to make sure the component value based on it's location and what the schematic states it should be.
There are two variants of the 95, you must make sure the schematic you use is the one for the set. I learned this the hard way.
Open primary/secondary or both windings in the interstage transformer (between the 27 and PP-45s) is common with these early models. There is a clever method to bypass one or both windings listed in this site.
By asking if it was electrically overhauled I was asking if someone had replaced every paper capacitors and out of tolerance resistor before you started using it. By your response I would say that the answer is a no. The reason I asked is that if the set has not been rebuilt electrically then it's very likely one (or more) of the 80+ year old capacitors decided to fail and that is the reason the set stopped working not the speaker. Speakers very seldom fail on their own accord, if there is an electrical problem with the speaker it is usually caused by something like a shorted filter capacitor burning out the field coil or the output transformer.
Regards
Arran