Just Acquired a 1939 Motorola Model 82A Radio! - Printable Version
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+--- Thread: Just Acquired a 1939 Motorola Model 82A Radio! (/showthread.php?tid=25557)
Just Acquired a 1939 Motorola Model 82A Radio! - captainclock1988 - 01-17-2025
Hello everyone, today I picked up for free locally from someone on facebook marketplace a 1939 Motorola Model 82A AM/SW Radio with built-in clock/timer controlled motorized tuning that is all original except for a couple of weird hacked in modifications that were put in by the one of the previous owners of the set, one of the modifications was that they hacked in a toggle switch in the back of the radio cabinet presumably to take the place of the original push-button power switch mounted on the front panel of the radio, and then the other modification which is kind of a weird modification is that someone at some point in time attempted to hack into the radio two extra speakers besides the original 12" Full-Range Speaker, but it looks like they were never able to actually get the speakers wired into the radio though because they wired some speaker wires to the hacked in drivers but never had them actually attached to anything by the looks of it, and also when they hacked in these additional drivers they butchered up the original speaker soundboard but somehow managed to keep the original grille cloth intact?
Not sure how that works...Anyways I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this particular model of radio and if so how hard or easy is it to restore electrically? I looked at the Rider's Manual for this radio and it looks pretty straight forward except the clock/timer/motorized tuning part which will be kind of interesting to work on.
Also How rare is this radio? I haven't seen too many examples of this model radio out there when doing a general Google search for this model, and what examples I did see were not in very good shape and or the bakelite bezels were either missing or damaged (mine has both bakelite bezels intact yet but the one for the clock is missing the glass insert.)
Any info on this radio would be appreciated, Pictures below of the unit in question.
RE: Just Acquired a 1939 Motorola Model 82A Radio! - Arran - 01-17-2025
I don't know too much about pre war Motorola sets, but I don't think they had a wide distribution outside of the U.S Midwest, sort of like a Fada would be in the East, or Packard Bell in the West. I'm sort of curious about the clock, did it have a ring of buttons around the perimeter of the dial, like a Teledial style radio dial? Is the dial glass missing from the radio portion? There are a few picture of Motorola sets in "A flick of the Switch" and there may be ads in magazine on Worldradiohistory.com (not sure of the URL for that).
From looking I think that the plastic escutcheons may be made out of that infamous plastic known as "Tenite", it was cellulose based as the early version was unstable known for shrinking, warping, cracking, and disintegrating, depending on the formula, the worst was used on Sears Silvertone sets around 1937, but was also used on several of our beloved Philcos. The brown trim next to the control panel looks like a faux finish, the fact that it isn't sun faded like the rest of the cabinet is the tip off.
From looking at the schemaic on Nostalgai Air, it would seem that most of the effort was put into the automation gadgets on this set, and not the radio receiver itself. It has only two bands, no tuned RF amplifier stage, and only one IF amplifier. Also it has only eight tubes, and two of them are rectifier tubes connected in parallel. not only that but it uses all the older 6.3 volt tubes with the old style base. An RCA 816K it is not, but you can use it to wake up in the morning.
http://www.nostalgiaair.org/PagesByModel/813/M0006813.pdf
Regards
Arran
RE: Just Acquired a 1939 Motorola Model 82A Radio! - Arran - 01-17-2025
Hello Again;
This may be useful, though not on a radio site: https://formodelship.org/2021/10/vintage-motorola-tube-radio-model-82a-ask-for-shipping-or-parts-knobs-speaker/
Regards
Arran
RE: Just Acquired a 1939 Motorola Model 82A Radio! - radiorich - 01-18-2025
Hello captainclock1988 ,
I have a friend with a prewar that is waiting for me to restore for him .
Sincerely Richard
RE: Just Acquired a 1939 Motorola Model 82A Radio! - captainclock1988 - 01-18-2025
Ok, nice, I'm getting ready to pull the radio chassis itself out of the radio to give it a once over and also get together a parts list.
I was looking at other pix of this set online that were in better shape than mine and apparently there isn't any additional glass missing from the clock bezel area but there does seem to be a small "knob" missing from the bottom of the bezel on mine which apparently the outer "preset" area of the clock dial works similar to an old "Teledial" style preset system like what Grunow used on some of their old radios from the same time period, or like what Philco used on some of their radios from the same time period (specifically the 38-116 console.)
RE: Just Acquired a 1939 Motorola Model 82A Radio! - captainclock1988 - 01-18-2025
Arran:
While the cabinet looks like crap and the tenite bezels are warped they are not broken, which is a good thing and kind of surprising, but the real stunner is Chassis on this radio; it is almost spotless (not one spot of rust to be found on this chassis except for a little spot of surface rust near the power transformer) which is extremely rare for a radio this old to have a nearly spotless chassis like this, I would rate the condition of this chassis to be even better than my Stewart-Warner Tombstone Radio Chassis which was in really good shape for its age (1934.)
Also this radio has a B+ fuse in the form of a No. 55 Pilot Light in the back of the chassis which is currently broken and I need to find a way to get the old bulb out (which if the person who owned this set before the people who I got this set from wasn't aware of the B+ Fuse on this radio and the bulb was broken when he had it and was trying to get it going but was unable to, that B+ fuse being broken may have been why he couldn't get the radio going.)
Also the undercarriage of this radio I was afraid of what I was going to find under the chassis of this radio because of what the person who I got this radio from had told me about the fact that the previous owner of the set before she got it had attempted to get the radio going but was unable to, and because of all of the modifications done with the speakers I was afraid the undercarriage was going to be a rats nest of bad wiring and hacked in capacitor replacements but to my shock and awe the undercarriage looked factory fresh yet (nearly all original capacitors intact yet with one replacement capacitor that was surprisingly enough replaced rather professionally (it wasn't j-hooked or anything like that, it was actually replaced by fully removing the original capacitor and wiring in the replacement capacitor in its place using factory looking replacement techniques; if it werent for the fact that the capacitor was clearly a replacement from the 1950s I would of sworn it was a capacitor from the factory, the repair was that good of quality.)
Also there was a later hacked in phono input on the back of the radio that at first I didn't know what it was until I removed the chassis from the cabinet and it was "hacked in" at the same point where the factory "TV Input" was wired in at; and the interesting thing is that the phono input was actually done fairly professionally (everything was shielded properly and grounded as it should be, and guessing by the fact that it had a 1950s looking capacitor in this mod, it must of been done in the 1950s, so a fairly old modification.)
The radio seems to be missing a "cable" going from the pilot lite assembly of the clock dial to the back of the radio chassis because there's a pilot light bulb assembly built into the back of the chassis that is marked on the back of the cabinet on the tube layout chart as being the clock pilot light wiring harness socket but then there's no wiring harness coming from the clock assembly for the pilot lights.
Another interesting thing is that on top of the radio chassis right behind the tuner dial assembly there's a lone upright facing light socket that has installed in the socket a No. 55 Pilot Lamp which at first I thought it might of been a spare B+ Fuse because it was the same exact bulb that the radio uses for the B+ fuse and that perhaps it was just a dummy socket that was being used to hold the spare fuse in, but then when I looked underneath the chassis there was actual wires going up to that socket that were tied to one of the tube sockets underneath, so then I figured that if it actually had live wires going to it then more than likely it must of been serving an actual purpose in the radio other than just a "dummy socket", the weird thing is that its not marked on the tube location chart on the back of the cabinet...
Also I figured out that the hacked in "power switch" on the back of the radio cabinet wasn't actually a power switch, but it was wired into the speaker cable and possibly has something to do with the hacked in speakers that were installed in the cabinet, and maybe the switch was wired in such a manner as to "switch off" the fieldcoil assembly from the original speaker so that they could utilize the hacked in Permanent magnet speakers so that they could have a more "Hi-Fi" sound for the phono input that was hacked in, possibly at the same time as the speaker hack. So Interestingly enough, the smaller speaker was just a generic 4" PM speaker from the 1950s (that may have been pulled from a 1950s AA5/AA6 tabletop radio) but the bigger PM Speaker was actually an EV Wolverine Speaker from the 1950s...
Also I wonder if my particular version of this radio is a little bit later version of the Model 82 Motorola Radio than what was used to make the service documentation for the Rider's Service Manuals because my radio most certainly does have a RF Section, and has 2 IF Sections not one like the Riders shows, and at that the RF sections in this radio are very complicated and well put together. Perhaps that's why this was called an 82A and not an 82.