The PHILCO Phorum

Found this on cr.list last night and could'nt resist. Very nice couple I bought it from. He had several nice radios and decided to sell this one.

Wow! Looks like an excellent starting point and it's nice and clean. Congrats on your find!

Craig R.

Much nicer cadmium than most. Don't polish it off!

Thanks for the comments. It looks better than the pics show. Does need good cleaning and will need some grill cloth,for $80.00 I'am happy.

Working condition???

Craig R.

Great find! I am sure you will love the 116X once you get it going. Only issues are the grill cloth (Mine is the same. Is it me or is this type of grill cloth prone to falling apart?) and you need a few correct knobs. I actually bought my 116X by accident, misidentifying as a 37-116X in the pictures on the CL ad. Now it is often my daily driver during the winter months.

I listen to my 116X regularly too. It's also an excellent radio to demonstrate to non-collectors how good AM radio can sound.

Hey Mike
Looks like you got a NICE one there! On the grille cloth you may want to try to salvage a bit of the center of it. You may find the that you will have to buy two pieces, one to cover large opening and a second for the two clairfilers. The large Philcos in '36 used a odd bandswitch knob it's not the same one that's use in '37 and later. You have the correct one.
It's a big set but not bad to work on like the newer '37 model. Doesn't have the separate David Grimes RF chassis which is a pain to service.
Hope your 6A3's are good and strong!
Terry
ps How's the dial? Is it missing? You may want to edit your subject line to say 116X. The 116 is a table set.

VntgRads He had it playing when I arrived. It sounded pretty good but I could here the hum in it and he unplugged it to load. So I won't be playing it til I change the caps and ck. resistors.
Thanks Jayce, I don"t know about the grill cloth. It feels flexable but looks like it was punctured with a finger. I guess I will replace it with some from Radiodaze. I will have to look into the correct knobs for it.
ekimstok I agree, the radio did sound pretty good and picked up differnt stations when he changed frequencies.

Mike

Nice find. When you get to that and have any questions let me know, I have restored mine as you know and have a 116B as well I am slowly working on. No problem on knobs they are around and I have a couple sets in my knob box as well.

Thanks Skip. I'll probably will have questions when I get into it. Sounds like I need to learn what the correct knobs are for this. Glad forum members are here to help.
Radioroslyn The dial is there and the shadow meter seemed to work for the 30secs I heard it and as the stations were changed. The dial has 5 bands.
Good idea on the grill cloth. One of the clarifiers also has a hole in cloth. Maybe can use part of the big piece to fit there. See if I can change the subject line. Wasn't aware of the table mod.

My 116X uses all three knobs of the same type across the bottom. I've never heard of a different style knob for the band switch on the 36 models myself and my 116X looked all original and unmolested when I bought it. Of course, with Philco variations can and did happen.
Edit: Ok, I checked the gallery and I see there were 1936 models with the odd band switch, so yours might be right. I checked outside the site and found 116X models done both ways, with the funky band switch like yours and the regular style knob like mine. I'm confused, which is right?

Both are right. Early models had the round bandswitch knob while later models used the semi-bar-shaped knob.

Nice find! I wanted to bid on that radio, but they did not ship, so the deal was no go. It really is a nice chassis, very clean considering the age. Good luck with the restoration!