[Ron Ramirez]

Well...

This morning, I printed a 54 dial graphic to size and taped it to the chassis. I found that the alignment - on the high end at least - actually wasn't too far off. At the low end, 600 kc was coming in around 70 on the dial. Fortunately, the 54 has a low frequency padder so this error was soon taken care of.

Now the set has been nicely aligned and is working properly. Yes, it is less sensitive on the low end of the dial, but it seems most of these cheaper radios are anyway. This isn't a laboratory grade instrument - it's a five tube cigar box pee-wee which was originally made to sell at a fairly low price.

I am very happy with how it has turned out. I would absolutely do this conversion again on a 54 if only to get rid of those two large power-wasting resistors on top of the chassis.

Thanks for the responses.

   

(Notice the Steve Davis alignment tool in the photo above.)