[jcassity]

It appears this radio is darn near as new can get to new... meaning as near to original ive seen.
I see a couple signs that maybe threre may have been a repair but i have to confirm.
all the tubes say hallicrafters.

works really great.

what it needs:
restring dial needle-done
The BFO is not optimum so i will fix that today but otherwise its ready for christmas wrapping paper.
Polarized power cord-will let my son do that
Inline fuse-will let my son do that
I broke the speaker paper... i fixed that with brush on rubber cement made by slime.  



this radio is going to my oldest son.

I have a problem though,
My brother in law was in yesterday from a road trip and a while back he picked up what he calls a "retro" am radio. He said he really likes it but it doesnt have a way for an external antenna and it just doesnt pick up much.

He showed signs that he would like to have a hallicraters,,, so on the hunt again for another.

[OldRestorer]

Great looking radio!
You're brother wants the same one?

[jcassity]

yup
so i gotta find another.

we have logical reasons for this, makes for hoarding spare parts & troubleshooting a lot easier to do.

of course when it breaks, i will get a call. My son is good with angry pixies racing about a circuit board but not my bro-in law.

[jcassity]

this one still has that bumble bee cap that i inspected and see no reason yet to get rid of it.

got the BFO working really good.
went ahead and did a polarized power cord, leaving the fuse to my son.

[jcassity]

found me another for my brother in law for christmas.

paid a bit much more than i would like but ,, this one may also be in fairly "new" shape.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Hallicrafters-S...SwJrpZc9Wx

[jcassity]

got this "another one" hallicrafters a couple days ago.
I will post a pic but... it was serviced already per the sales description.
radio worked well ,, actually better than my personal one with respect to short wave stations. on the low AM bands, this one seems to not have as much interference as my personal one and the one i am giving my son.

flip it over and i had to revert back to something i was told by my uncle Lester as a curious child..........
"scottie boy, if it aint broke, dont fix it".

i was so tempted because the work done was appreciated by me but ..... to say the least its risky to bump the radio or take the bottom cover off.
the leads of replacement parts are rather long and bare and generally wibbley wobbley if you jiggle the radio.

First check out of the box for these all american 5's is to insure you have NO CONTINUITY from the exterior chassis to the interior chassis. this one had continuity and thus the isolating insulating mounting feed was the fault.

I have no,, I MEAN NONE,, no idea whats going on here but...........
on my personal Hallicrafters i followed "s38guy" website instructions on how to "fix" the factory screw up gimik capacitor (BFO) and i can tune in just about any side band just fine with a lot of bandspread fine tuning.

on these two radios both had the normal BFO screwed up. i created the new gimik capacitor and did adjusted a couple other wires but these two radios dont have the ability to "as finely as mine" tune in the side bands.

the only difference is on my radio, i replace 100% of all old large caps and some resistors.

on these two sets, one is compeltely oem, the other is serviced but retains some paper/wax caps.

[oldswab37]

We have on in an exhibit. It does work but it was very hard to to restring the dial for both variables.