The PHILCO Phorum
1920s Atwater-Kent Model 46 - Printable Version

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1920s Atwater-Kent Model 46 - captainclock1988 - 09-11-2020

Hello everyone, I received today from someone that wanted me to repair for them a 1920s Atwater-Kent Model 46 TRF Radio with with its original Cast Iron housed speaker, which has a dry-rotted rubber surround for the cone, which I was thinking I could replace that old rubber surround with a modern foam surround that would make this speaker sing again.

Another thing, is that this is an even earlier AC Set than my old Eveready Model 1 unit was so I'm wondering how involed this radio is going to be to restore compared to my Eveready?

I've found the service data for this unit online, one was in Beitmans, and one was through Riders, the Beitmans seemed to be more detailed than the Riders.

What do you think? I know Atwater-Kent was known for making pretty high end, high quality units which may or may not also mean more complicated to work on, but I'm not sure really.

Did I bite off more than I could chew with this thing or will this actually be easier to work on than my Eveready was?

Also under the tuning knob there seems to be a knob or something missing, but I'm not sure what it is, its a fairly long metal shaft with a threaded hole in the middle that sits directly under the tuning knob.

Thanks for your help.

-Levi

RE: 1920s Atwater-Kent Model 46 - Eliot Ness - 09-12-2020

Quote:Did I bite off more than I could chew with this thing or will this actually be easier to work on than my Eveready was?
That's hard to say, but if you do a search on "Atwater Kent Model 46" you'll find at least one thread on the other forum about replacing the capacitors and dealing with the power pack.  In the mean time here are a couple of diagrams you might find useful:

http://www.atwaterkent.info/TechData/Drawings/Images/AK14100sch.pdf

http://www.atwaterkent.info/TechData/Images/SM3106_070.gif

I don't think it would be more difficult than any other AC TRF from that era except for melting out that power pack, and you might not have to do that.

RE: 1920s Atwater-Kent Model 46 - captainclock1988 - 09-12-2020

OK, thanks, I'll keep that information in mind and study those diagrams. 

Hopefully the power supply won't need too much work, but the "power supply can" does look like it has had its filter caps replaced in it at one point in time because there's a cardboard box style electrolytic cap  and a cylinder shaped one on top of the power supply can attached across some of the terminals on top of the power supply can.

RE: 1920s Atwater-Kent Model 46 - captainclock1988 - 09-18-2020

I ended up giving up on it, because the chassis had tons of rust on it and most of the mounting screws were rusted to the point that if you tried turning them with a screwdriver the heads just stripped out, and the grid leak resistor was measuring open and some of the RF coils were in really bad shape with some open windings and shorted turns and other issues, and the speaker cone was severely warped from water damage, and the surround was gone and had crumbled to pieces. 

I let the guy that I was working on this radio for know and he said he was just going to try and put it on ebay and see what he could get out of it just selling it as a parts unit.

If someone on here that lives within an hour or two of me was interested in this radio I could post some pictures on here of the unit and talk to the owner of the set and see what kind of a price we could work out and go from there.

Thanks,

Levi