[rfeenstra]

It lives again!  Got all globe tubes from FindATube - my tube tester rates them a bit below replacement levels, but they work.  Bob is great to work with.  One Cunningham CX326 drew enough grid current in the rf amps to pull the negative 4 v bias up to nearly 0 volts.  It must be a bit gassy.  It worked in the af driver position, but Bob is sending me another, no questions asked.

It certainly needs a bit of work yet as the hum level is a bit unacceptable.  I suspect the filament resistors to ground are unbalanced.  Only one is adjustable.  This radio certainly needs a long wire antenna as sensitivity is otherwise poor.  It's interesting that this radio has both a local/distant switch and an antenna adjustment.  It also seems to be more sensitive to noise from the line than the other radios I have.  Lack of AGC is annoying!  Getting all of the tuning caps to line up precisely is fun, and the very tiny bit of hysteresis in the linkage is noticeable when tuning.  I need to work on getting all 4 of the caps in the right position so that the hysteresis is not as noticeable.  Could be tricky.  While I'll probably rarely listen to this radio, it's kind of satisfying to take a fairly unique piece of history and make it work again.

Russ, if you read this, how was the performance of your AC 7?  Did you have any problems getting the tuning caps lined up?  I believe you have an extra tuned stage over the AC 6.  This is a 1926-27 radio, one of the early AC radios.  I know progress was being made at an incredible  rate in those days.  This radio does not stack up - so far- to the performance of my Philco 96 (with AGC, 1930), or even my Atwater Kent 55 (w/o AGC, 1930).  From what I've read, the Grebe was a good performer in its day.  I think I have a bit of work to do yet.

More comments later.