[Guest]

I finally have the chance to buy myself one of these. But it needs work. I need to know the proper colors for the finish. It is all one color right now and it looks....er, funny. Also, what knobs does the darn thing originally have. I bet I can have Larry Bordonaro make some up.
Speaking of Larry... I had him make me an extra set of knobs for my 49-501.
There IS NO difference between OEM and repro. None!!! Again, I say the man is a national treasure!!
Tubeboob

[49Stude63]

Tubenutt I will send to you an email that Ron sent to me about the color for a 16B. I finally picked one up also (5band version) but the color scheme is the same for the later versions.

[Ron Ramirez]

Here is the proper color scheme for a 16B tombstone, whether "peaked" or somewhat flat on top:

[Image: http://www.philcoradio.com/images/16b_jlda.jpg]

The dark toner on this cabinet was badly worn, but the walnut panels were basically OK other than being scratched up a bit. The dark color that was left on the cabinet closely matched the Mohawk Van Dyke Brown toner, so that is what I used. I rubbed the cabinet down, masked off the walnut panels, the accent stripes, and the center strip where the PHILCO decal is, and sprayed several coats of new Van Dyke Brown over the cabinet. The "in process" result is shown above. In this photo, the toner has been applied and the cabinet is basically ready for clear lacquer. After I snapped this photo, I carefully sprayed two light coats of toner over the center strip once I saw it was lighter than the rest (you can see how it is lighter above).

The entire set received several coats of clear lacquer after the toner, which renewed the look of the walnut panels and made the entire cabinet look like new. Unfortunately I never did take an "after" shot, but the end result turned out quite well. It still has the original walnut toning on the panels, the original accent striping, and the original PHILCO decal. It was better than completely stripping the cabinet and starting over from scratch.

[Guest]

Well guys! The 16B issue resolved itself..I didn't get it! Istill will get me one of those one of these days! BEAUTIFUL!! Best looking radio ever made in my book! Along with the 45C butterfly!

[ckc]

i have the peak top 16 b and was wondering if the right and left color bars on rons' 16 b picture were not originally as light as in picture not as light as that what type of finsih remover was used to make them as light as they were . the accent strips on mine look somewhat dark the picture in philco radio atlas shows them looking different

[Ron Ramirez]

The thin accent stripes should be ivory, as shown in the picture above. What you see in that photo are the original ivory accent stripes - unretouched by me. The only thing I did to that cabinet was to apply new Van Dyke Brown toner to the dark areas of the cabinet, where the finish was badly worn.

My goal with the cabinet above was to restore the dark finish while retaining as much of its originality as possible. Through careful masking of the walnut panels and the accent stripes, that goal was accomplished. The original decal remained in place; I did have to carefully tone the dark area where the decal is, to make it match the rest of the cabinet. That was the hardest part.

The walnut panels do look a bit light in the photo above, due chiefly to lighting used in the photo. I had rubbed them down somewhat with 4/0 steel wool, not removing any of the tone color but just enough surface finish to correct some of the surface flaws, in preparation for new clear lacquer. Once the new clear lacquer was applied, they looked fine, color was perfect. I regret that I never did take an "after" shot. But I have another 16B on its way here, and I'll take a picture of it after I work with its cabinet a bit.