Hi I'm new here and seeing I now have a philco..well here I am!
During the Canada post strike, I bid on a Philco 610 in good shape.
I didn't think I'd win, so I had nothing to lose so I threw out $50. The days went by and nobody else bid, and I won it! Hot dog! I always wanted a tombstone radio but they go for big money if they aren't baked and trashed.
It looks like it has originall knobs, grill cloth, some original Philco tubes, and the original cord. Finish is decent.
Thank goodness it got to me in one piece!
Seller said he bought it twenty years ago and it worked then, but he fired it up and it just made static.
Got the old girl to my table, pulled the chassis out and somebody recapped it really sloppy.
Powered it up through a 100w bulb, put on a one foot wire, and it came alive happily pulling in lots of stations. Zero hum.....ZERO.
Speaker doesn't rub. Dial light was dead until I poked around and it came to life illuminating the dial!
Tuning is way off on the am band like by 50khz to the left if I tune to station 800khz.
Shortwave is dead and switching to the defuct police band has bleed over from the AM band.
Cleaned the case with murfeys wood soap and warm water. Knobs too.
I didn't disturb any of the tubes, after seeing a YouTube video where the top cap ripped off a tube just by pulling the wire off!!
But I have some questions.
The tuning knob, the center fine control came off in my hand the shaft popped off some unseen coupling. Does anybody know how the gear reduction mechanism works so I can get it back on? The center knob came off with the shaft with the balloon the end with it.
I love this radio, I'm listening to programs and I'm impressed by it's volume and sound quality for a 6"speaker.
(This post was last modified: Yesterday, 02:25 PM by Oldie Goldie.)
Good morning and welcome to the Phorum! You’ll love it here. I’ve been a member for almost a year, and I learn something new every time I sign on.
I can’t speak to the gearing for that knob, but I can lend a hand with the poor recap. Are you aware of the archive of schematics and alignment instructions? Navigate to https://philcoradio.com/library/ and click the Menu button. Then select Service Info, and select your model year.
If you mean you have a shaft with a sprocket on it, and if it has a brass bushing like this one (shown at the end of the page in the middle of the dial), it came off of that assembly.
Or maybe it has some waist with a small bulb at the end.
I do not remember if it has same type gear.
If it does, it has some spring-loaded ball bearings, that make it rotate a larger cylinder that has a sprocket.
People who do not drink, do not smoke, do not eat red meat will one day feel really stupid lying there and dying from nothing.
I looked at the two early and later versions of the "schematic" freely available on the internet.
It's confusing me, I'm used to clean and clear Sams.
The best quality stuff available for the 610 I could find are like bad xerox copies.
I have 1949 Buick Delco sonomatic data sheets that are very clear. But there is no service data on the tuning mechanism for my Philco as I could find.
This is the link to the schematic in our library that jrblasde was pointing you toward. Its a pdf file you can download if you want and blow it up or view it on your browser. Looks pretty clear.
Here's a 610 rebuild thread by TV MAN from 2014 that might help. Somewhere in the middle I saw the tuning dial disassembled. There are surely other 610 threads in the Phorum that a search will reveal as well.
I restored a 610 some time back but my thread doesn't really have a lot of info in it. I no longer have that radio so I can't take a look at it.
I think your tuning shaft has lost a C clip that holds it together. The inside shaft is separated from the outside shaft with 3 or more ball bearings setting up a planetary shaft where the inside shaft rotates at a ratio to the outside. The inside shaft may also be serrated to keep the whole mechanism from drifting. It all needs a good cleaning and lubricating. Don't loose the balls. My version is from 1935-36 and has a spring loaded friction disc at the business end that moves a thin curved rod attached to the dial. I believe yours has a gear attached.
I want to undo a lot of the crappy repairs the last clown did and to a proper recap, clean up of the hacked up wiring, than realignment and a real antenna hooked up.
Id like to do a couple mods:
Modern day AM seems to be very bass heavy compared to 1935.
Id like to reduce the values of the double pole tone switch.
Or keep the first position light bass setting making it the "high bass boost" and eliminating the cap entirely in the second switch position.
I want to rewire the rear terminals and just send the "Red" terminal to the lug of the volume control through an isolation transformerso I can hook a Bluetooth unit to it for my 300 GB of old times radio programs and 30s Swing music.
In my area the grid is roaring at nearly 127v at night.
I have a fifties vintage military radar station auto transformer.
Hooked it up and fed it 110v.
Poor old girl.
A couple years ago I took a 200w power strip shaped UPS and scooped out the inverter circuit.
Wired the beefy 12v transformer in buck-reduce and wired the built in outlets to that. Run everything in my bedroom and it keeps my pre-80s stuff happy and even my modern stuff seems perkier not being grilled.
I may make a little unit just for this radio, so the auto transformer can be used elsewhere
(This post was last modified: 11 hours ago by Oldie Goldie.)
I need fresh grommits for the tuning assembly because it's rocking and rolling in it's place from parishes doughnuts.
I'm taking shango66's advice and hiding a power strip behind the radio and turning it off with that to save the almost 90 year old switch/volume.
Might build a tube adaptor to put in a fresh 6V6 tube in place of the (electrically) 6F6.
Those dings and scratches, I wonder what I could stain them with to hide them. The rest of the original finish is on but I thing there are brown pens available? In not a wood guy.
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