10-03-2011, 08:08 PM
JROZ Wrote:to be honest I want to fully restore the cabinet, but replace the face with a 15" touchscreen and turn it into a classic looking jukebox
Why would you want to do that? If it's just the cabinet that you want I would take up Ron's offer of the 39-55, if that's won't work I'm sure that someone else could come up with another empty cabinet. The 38-2X would actually be a very decent radio if electrically restored and it has a decent audio output amp, why not make use of what's there and feed the music into it from an external source, you could even do so using a short range AM transmitter. The radio is from 1938, so it will be of collector interest now and ten years from now, if you toss the guts and install a Chinese flat screen and other hardware in the cabinet it will be worthless five years from now. I should also mention that it would be far cheaper to restore the original chassis then to buy any of the "tech" stuff you want to put in it, excluding defective tubes the set has under $30 worth of resistors and capacitors in it. By restoring the chassis and feeding the music into it from an external source, when the external hardware becomes obsolete you just replace it with whatever else comes along and you will still have a nice old radio to pair up with it.
Regards
Arran