06-19-2018, 10:05 PM
I used to have three of these that I rescued from the pile at my late friend's place, but I sold off the one with the questionable power transformer, possibly dead AM section, missing tubes and missing knobs a few years back. Kind wish I had kept it for the cabinet though! Oh well, I needed the $20 at the time and the guy didn't care about its issues.
Anyways, tonight I dug out my remaining two units and the one set of original, matching Silvertone speakers to try out this evening. Believe it or not, I arrived at my late friend's house just in time that day to save the speakers from going onto the burn pile, which was already lit! So, the one unit in the better cabinet works, but I think it has some bad IF cans in the AM section. The one in the beat up cabinet (speakers are also a bit beat up!) works fine all the way around. I'm thinking of taking the two and making one good unit to play with and keeping the other guts and knobs for parts. What is sad is all of these units were in good shape along with the speakers when I first met my buddy in 1998. He did recap the amps on at least these two, but as time went by he decided any radio made after 1942 was junk and he didn't treat these very well in his final years. All of them were missing the tubes when his dad gave them to me and I got lucky that a mutual friend of ours wanted a radio I had bought from my late friend a few days before he passed away. He traded me enough 12AX7 and 6BQ5 tubes for all three units, which gives me some spares. Actually, four of the 6BQ5 tubes are the actual Silvertone tubes from one of the tuners. My late friend had sold them to the other guy!
I'll try to get some pictures soon. I must admit, these are pretty healthy sounding stereos. Both speaker enclosures have three speakers each in them, so it equals stereo console in that manner. (Actually is as wide as my Silvertone console stereo with the speakers set up to either side!)
Edit: The speakers are model number 7438.
Anyways, tonight I dug out my remaining two units and the one set of original, matching Silvertone speakers to try out this evening. Believe it or not, I arrived at my late friend's house just in time that day to save the speakers from going onto the burn pile, which was already lit! So, the one unit in the better cabinet works, but I think it has some bad IF cans in the AM section. The one in the beat up cabinet (speakers are also a bit beat up!) works fine all the way around. I'm thinking of taking the two and making one good unit to play with and keeping the other guts and knobs for parts. What is sad is all of these units were in good shape along with the speakers when I first met my buddy in 1998. He did recap the amps on at least these two, but as time went by he decided any radio made after 1942 was junk and he didn't treat these very well in his final years. All of them were missing the tubes when his dad gave them to me and I got lucky that a mutual friend of ours wanted a radio I had bought from my late friend a few days before he passed away. He traded me enough 12AX7 and 6BQ5 tubes for all three units, which gives me some spares. Actually, four of the 6BQ5 tubes are the actual Silvertone tubes from one of the tuners. My late friend had sold them to the other guy!
I'll try to get some pictures soon. I must admit, these are pretty healthy sounding stereos. Both speaker enclosures have three speakers each in them, so it equals stereo console in that manner. (Actually is as wide as my Silvertone console stereo with the speakers set up to either side!)
Edit: The speakers are model number 7438.
No matter where you go, there you are.