[RetroRev]

Wondering if anyone has ever thought of having a custom printed circuit board made for their radio? 

I found a company that will make a circuit board from a schematic, allowing all the resistors and caps etc, to be neatly slotted onto the board, doing away with the rats nest of cathodes/anodes underneath, only requiring to run wires from the various tubes and what have you on top, to neatly arranged plugs on the board. 

I know to the purists, this is probably sacrilege, but it would be a nice compromise, keeping the original components, just in a more orderly fashion.

Thoughts?

[MrFixr55]

Hi RetroRev,

May be a lot of money for naught. One can do the same thing with "Perfboard". However, since most of the wiring is point to point, one can make a rather clean layout with the parts and wiring. If one looks at Old School "HAM equipment, WWII or other Gov't surplus electronics, EH Scott, McMurdo Silver or other antique "high end" radios, they will note the orderly layout of both wiring and components, with the components laid out in "right angles, either parallel or perpendicular to other components and to the chassis. Very neat, but also may have prevented undesired coupling. The radios for "everyman" were assembled as quickly as possible with as few inches of wire as possible, as during the depression and later, price was an issue. It is interesting to compare the ways that radios were built before and after the depression. Before the depression, RCA Superhet radios sold between $150 and $800! (A 1927 Model T Ford started at about $250). By 1933, an RCA R28 "loss leader" Superhet could be had for $22.99 (Though I bet they lost money on them. One of the differences is in how they were built and wired.

The printed circuit board was built primarily to further automate production of electronics. Same with the Integrated circuits. RCA sold TVs advertising "Solid Copper Circuits" as a matter of reliability, even placing one of their portable TVs on a shaker while playing, but considering the wafer sockets and cold solder joints, as the sets aged, that may be a point of contention.


Remember, when restoring AM and especially FM radios, adherence to the original component placement for couplng caps and some wiring may be critical, particularly in the RF and IF sections. Even placement of filament (heater) and AC wiring is important.

Good luck,

John, MrFixr55

[morzh]

Purist or not, and I make PCBs for living, in old radio point-to-point is simply cleaner.
And...why? Once you ventured to PCBs, then why stop and not replace tubes with transistors....


What others call purism, I call the desire to have original equipnent look, feel and work the original way. Else what's the point of all this...

[Chas]

Hmm, a PC board for repair/refurbish. I, would not, simply because I have the skills to build, re-build vacuum tube electronics. I'm not ignoring PC boards as unskilled repair mechanism. I have designed and repaired PC boards with some of the smallest devices that are practical to work with.

IMHO there are such instances in point to point radio repair where there is tedium...

It is recognizing a demand for a PC board to solve that type of tedious problem. For example a board used to make multiple interconnection to rebuild a large capacitor block.

The "Couplate" comes to mid. It is a multiple device component that interconnects stages in a radio. When one component fails within this device the entire group of devices has to be hard wired as individual components.

There are popular "couplates", it is these that could be replicated with surface devices and a PC board. Pre-loaded even with leads this could be economically practical.

Chas

[RodB]

You should probably scrap the idea of using plugs to tube connections. Through my experience with computer equipment dating back to the 1960s, most failures occurred with a connector. As witnessed in this phorum, many solutions to our radio problems are solved by cleaning tube pins and sockets or a loose wire. Now you want to double the number of male and female connections and wires? Not in my shop. It's the weakest link.

[RetroRev]

Those are all very valid points that I hadn't considered. Especially the placement of components in respect to others to avoid interference. That's not something someone in China making a random pcb is going to know what to do with.

[462ron]

I remember back in the day when many TV manufacturers were going the way of the PCB, Zenith was still advertising their ‘hand built’ technology. Then along came Motorola Quasar with the ‘works in a drawer’, soon after many went with the plug in module way of building and as RodB mentioned, so many intermittents were caused by the module connectors themselves!

Ron

[radiorich]

Hello Ron,
For sure everyone went to circuit boards remember the company worwick who made some of sears Tv's ?

Sincerely Richard

[462ron]

Hi Richard, can’t say that I remember worwick, I think I rarely if ever worked on a Sears TV!

Ron

[MrFixr55]

+1 on all the comments.

Zenith advertised their chassis as hand built but the later ones had these conical metal connectors on phenolic strips mounted to the metal chassis/ these conical connectors also surrounded the tube sockets. these connectors were above the chassis and open underneath. The components were stuffed into these connectors, then the chassis likely went through a solder pool similar to the wave solder pool used on PC Boards, so slightly hand built. I went nuts trying to fix a zenith color set that "ghosted, toll I found the cold joint between one of these posts and a tab bent up from the chassis, that served as a ground. This was also a common issue on the PC Board solder points to the chassis tabs that supported them and served as chassis ground.

I Had several XL100 sets from that German store "Offen der Streit" that I fixed and gave away. (I think my youngest brother still has one). When I bought a nice RCA Demensia (never bought the companion HiFi components), they went to single PCB, likely for 3 reasons:
1. It was cheaper.
2. Yes, solid state devices were proven to be more reliable.
3. Most of all, too many intermittent connections from the plug-in boards!

[radiorich]

Hello MrFixr55,
For sure "Most of all, too many intermittent connections from the plug-in boards!"
Far ar those zenith Chassis I worked on a lot of them !

Sincerely Richard

[falcon123]

completely off the point of the topic but doing new boards to repair/replace/upgrade "unobtainium" boards for early 70's electronics is quite doable,even to the point of re-engineered boards like power supplies. there are several examples for sale on ebay for the sx1980 and sx1010 pioneers. and soon the sx-939 as i have a prototype in my 939. it runs much cooler and is quality g-10 board too. but im with everyone else when it comes to tube radio.i saw a youtube about some guy who re-engineered a hallicrafters sx-100 to solid state with NO tubes and a different power supply. the question remains ,"but why?" even the us naval academy converted a hammarlund hq-100(??) to solid state as an engineering exercise in the mid '60's.they published a report about it as well.

[RodB]

And the question remains, "But why?"

[falcon123]

why? who knows? boredom,idle curiosity perhaps, if you are referring to tube radios. some people restore and collect vintage washing machines too. hard to believe, but true. i am sure some of those folks rewind motors too.

[MrFixr55]

Why? Because it's there?

Some people do crosswords, some do sudoku, we fix stuff and know things1