[exray]

Jayce mentioned the RCA 140 so I thought it would be interesting to show some photos of mine. Jayce - it only cost $50 (and about $50 shipping) but you can see why . They were poking fun at it on Usenet wondering what sort of sap would buy it.

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It had suffered the "someone carried it by the top edge" syndrome and the top broke away and the rest is history. I was able to secure the top with dowel rod. It was a $50 gamble that all the pieces were there!

[exray]

Here's a pic of the completed radio.

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Except for the top where refinishing was obviously required it still has its ORIGINAL finish! Its a wonderful radio and one of my favorites.

-Bill

[Ron Ramirez]

WOW! That is beautiful! Congratulations on another fine save, Bill!

[exray]

Thanks, Ron.

[Alan Douglas]

Now that's impressive, and with the original toner on the front, no one is going to question the top.

[denver]

Done a outstanding job. All the sets i get are rough as a cobb. But that is why i get them when i get through wow look at the difference.
I did that .

[Jayce]

Wow! That is a great job on that radio! The guy I bought my 140 off of had a little Simplex that he wanted $150, that was in pieces and had the back of the cabinet damaged by being carried from the top. I decided on the 140 instead, though it wasn't cheap. Odd thing about my 140: it has a servicing stamp on it from Aug. 25th, 1945. During that time, it appears they completed rebuilt the chassis and redid it for all 6 volt tubes in the original sockets! Possibly the power transformer was dead and wartime limitations left them with only 6 volt transformers? A friend of mine has seen this done before on wartime radios. The question is: to restore fully to original or leave the wartime modification in there? Looks original until you look at the numbers on the tubes themselves.

[exray]

Thanks, Alan. Actually the top doesn't look half bad either but you can spot the dowel ends if you know where to look.

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Jayce, If I understand you correctly they simply used the 6 volt equivalents and not replacement octal types? I could live with that. What did they use for an audio output tube?

Here's what I found under the RF deck of mine.

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Pulling out the RF deck is a bit of a chore. I wonder why they had to do it TWICE?

[Jayce]

The radio was using a 6a6 for an output in place of the type 53. It's basically a six volt type 53. Pinout is the same and everything. Sadly, the question to keep this radio six volt or not has been rendered moot. The input transformer or power transformer is shot and will need to be replaced. Since I will be getting the same transformer for mine and the repair guy who also has a chassis like mine, we will be going back to the 2 volt type. What is it about some models of radios and their eating transformers? This one was replaced in 1945, so one would have thought it would be good, but it is shot. And this type of RCA chassis does seem known for bad transformers.

[Ken G]

That looks real good . One radio on my wanttttttttt list

[Allen in SB]

What a wonderful save. Bill, you certainly got the last laugh!
I saw one of these locally for sale. It appears to be complete and in good to fair condition. Are these rare? What is a reasonable price range?

Thanks,

Allen

[exray]

I wouldn't say they are rare but they seem to fetch prices as if they were. Ungoofed up ones on ebay recently have sold for numbers like 400-600 which seems really too much to me. If you can get it for 200-300 that sounds more realistic.

[Jayce]

And beware the power transformers in these sets. Seems like the radios I run into with this chassis around my area always seem to have dead transformers. That and they are a bear to rebuild with the way they are built. Actually, I should have left mine sit a bit longer before taking it up to be rebuilt. I need to get my butt in gear now and get a transformer for it.

[Doug Houston]

Matter of factly, there are a few interesting idiosyncracies about the 140 family of RCA sets. I've had several, and have a few, just now.

They're usually seen as the 140; a 4 band set, and the last one of the RCA deep chassis radios. They were made as a 5 band model, with the 140-410KC band added. Those sets were known as 140-E, and AVR-1. One model (140-E?) had a rather handsome art-deco inspired case (a table model). The set also appeared as an AVR- (?) forgot, It was made for, and used in airport towers. I've never known of one for sale....dangit!

The set was a very hot radio. For the SW bands, an extra RF stage (58) was switched in. Indeed, the tube types had 6 volt equivalents, for direct conversion. If you'd want, there are even direct octal equivalents. The 53 became 6A6 (both fat pin), then 6N7G (octal).

The power transformer had dual primaries on all models, which made them a 240 Volt set, if you wanted. I haven't heard of burned out power transformers, but somebody is gonna have one sooner or later! The biggest bugaboo on those sets is an open speaker field. the field is 6950 ohms, and is open, lots of times. The field is connected directly across the 300 volt output of the 80. This is because the 53 is a class B power amplifier, and the B+ current is all over the map, so it wasn't practical to use the field in series with the power supply. A PM speaker can replace the speaker directely, and forget about the field.

The killer part of this set is the big coil rack in the chassis. If you're going to re-cap the set, the coils have to come out....with their 23 leads, to unsolder, and replace. Don't work on one of these sets with small children present.

But, in spite of all that, it's a terrific radio.

[Jayce]

I have to add a correction to my previous post. It is the INPUT transformer that seems to be problematic with the sets found around here. Both mine, and my friend's 140's both have dead input transformers and so far that are proving to be a bit of a headache to find. Hopefully we will get the radios going before Christmas. Thanks for the additional info, very interesting about the 140 line of RCA and GE radios. My friend's is the 140 chassis in a GE console.