[Nick3092]

I got it aligned, including the magnetic tuning transformer. I answered my own question in the process. If you are aligning by AVC then you just treat the mag tuning like any other adjustment and go for the most negative AVC. When dialed in to the sig gen at 1k full strength, I hear no shfit in tone when turning the mag tuning on and off, and the AVC stays perfectly steady. When tuning into a station, it works quite well. You can rock the tuner about +/- 10kHz and it stays locked on the station perfectly. Even works well on shortwave signals that tend to drift and are finicky to dial in.

I put it back in the cabinet, and it sounds great. There is a slight occasional crackle in the speaker. It's not too noticeable when the volume is up on a station. But you can hear it when the volume is low. I had an interstate transformer do that to me on an RCA where someone showed me how to bypass the primary to clear it up. That was much, much louder though. So maybe this is the early stages of the primary going bad?

It's not bad enough at this point to try and track it down. Just curious if anyone had any thoughts or ideas on troubleshooting that can easily be done with the radio in the chassis.

Other than that, just need to track down some station tabs. No one reproduces them as far as I can tell. I think I'll shoot RD an email and see if it's something they would consider, or how much it would be for a custom order. I'd be willing to cut them all out to save money on labor if they could print them up.