09-20-2008, 05:35 PM
Hello - Today, I'm "Pleased As Punch" and have got to share this with you. After about a month of working on my (1936) Zenith 6-S-52, powered it up for the first time this afternoon... and it worked immediately (and quite well) on both AM and Shortwave. As mentioned earlier, had to replace the external wiring harness on the power transformer. Of course all paper and electrolytic caps were pulled. Every resistor in the radio, including the Candohm, was way out of tolerance and had to go. Even the tone control was shot. The real "kicker" was an "extra" paper cap that someone put in about 50 years ago (from the looks of the part) along with some wiring changes. Finally figured out how to bring things back to schematic. The field coil in the speaker was open, so out it went. Tried it today with a "ridiculously small" 3" diameter, permanent magnet speaker, but it sounds good to me. Will be getting suitable replacement electrodynamic model. Two encouraging factors were that all six vacuum tubes were good and there is no rubber insulation. This radio must have had a lot of use over the years, none of the tubes were the Zenith brand - guess that they were all replaced at one time or another. Still plenty to do, but have reached an important milestone. Here is a photo of the chassis, along with my Variac and isolation transformer:
[Image: http://www.vacuumtubeera.net/Photos/Zenith-6-S-52.jpg]
[Image: http://www.vacuumtubeera.net/Photos/Zenith-6-S-52.jpg]