My interest in old radios began with the restoration of my father's old Pye 39 J/H. This was followed shortly after by a visit to the radio exhibition held in London at the Victoria and Albert museum in 1977.
The following sets are a sample from my collection, others will be added to the web page as time and space permit.
Eddystone 840c
Eddystone 770R
Ever Ready Spacemaster
Murphy A124
Pye 39 J/H
Pye P114BQ
Racal RA17
Ultra Tiger
Ultra FM950
Volksempfänger
Typical post war set in bakelite cabinet. When acquired set was very dirty, chassis was very rusty and dial cord and pointer were missing.
Above picture shows the chassis after loose rust had been cleaned off. It was subsequently painted with smoothrite, although I was unhappy with the finish achieved.
The next picture shows the underneath of the chassis. One of the yellow replacement capacitors fitted is shown by the blue arrow.
Status: Working
Restoration problems: missing dial cord & pointer. Leaky capacitors.
The 840c was one of Eddystone's most junior communications receivers, it has a basic superhet circuit and is built on the AC/DC pattern to allow use on board ships. What lifts this set out of the ordinary is that it is still fitted with with the wonderful Eddystone slow motion tuning drive allowing very fine tuning. The set covers 500kHz - 30 MHz in 5 bands and is a development of the earlier 4 band 840 sets.
Eddystone has just been sold in 1999 by GEC its parent company.
Status: Working
Restoration Problems: Leaky capacitors, out of tolerance resistors,
full realignment required.
I have had a lot of problems getting this receiver up to scratch, in particular the sensitivity on range 1 (110 - 165MHz) is still lower than the specification. I would be interested to hear from anyone who has restored one of these sets.
Status: Working
Restoration Problems: 40+ Leaky capacitors, loose valve holders, complete
re-alignment required + much more.
View restoration details as published in BVWS
bulletin.
View 1955 Wireless World review (582k JPG)
This is a very unusual battery only set built in a large table style cabinet with 8" Celestion speaker. Presumably built for export as it has no longwave. Features push-pull output giving 1.5W or so. Battery life was obviously not too much of a consideration as a magic eye tuning indicator is fitted! Short wave coverage on battery sets is unusual suggesting the export 'empire' market.
This set even has gramophone pick-up connections, presumably from a wind-up or battery powered turntable!
Status: Working.
Restoration Problems: Open circuit output transformer, leaky capacitors,
shorting tuning capacitor.
Murphy were based in Welwyn garden city, Hertfordshire, they were absorbed by Rank and the site was taken over by Xerox.
Status: Working, but requiring replacement of some cables.
Restoration Problems: Rectifier valve.
This radio was introduced in about 1949. It features 11 wavebands including 8 bandspread shortwaves. Pye were probably the post war leaders in domestic shortwave sets and by using bandspreading the SW stations were as easy to tune as local medium wave ones. The amplifier uses 2 EL33's in push-pull giving about 8 watts, this is delivered through a high efficiency 10" Lectrona speaker giving good volume and tone. Tone control is via Pye's tonemaster switch giving 4 pre-set positions: FIDelity (flat), BRIght (bass cut), MELlow (treble cut) and SW (short wave), similar to FID but with altered AGC time constant to cope better with fading stations etc.
Pye ended their days as part of Philips ultimately disappearing as a separate brand.
Current Status: Working.
Restoration Problems: Tired EL33, broken drive cord, break up of original
translucent material behind scale, scratchy volume control.
These sets are quite common at rallies in various finishes and must have sold well. They also perform well with good sensitivity and tone. They are typical examples of they so-called 'jewel case portable'. When the lid is opened the radio starts to play. These battery sets require one 90V and one 1.5V cell to operate. The 90V types have been unavailable for years, although one could obviously connect 10 9V cells together.
To solve this problem I designed the unit pictured between the 2 sets. This is an inverter that takes 6V in from a modern accumulator and converts it to 1.5V and 90V to run the radio. The unit senses when the set is on and so is not continuously powered. Efficiency is of the order of 75%, but because the unit contains a power oscillator breakthrough of harmonics can be a problem.
Failure of the output transformer is a common fault on this type of
set and both these examples have had their transformers changed at some
time.
This receiver covers from 500kHz to 30MHz and is the product that made the Racal company. The first commercial receiver to make use of the Wadley loop circuit it offers very low drift combined with high tuning accuracy. This is one of the select few valve receivers that allow you to accurately tune to any desired frequency within 1kHz (or better) accuracy. Making it very suitable for reception of SSTV WEFAX etc.
The tuning method of splitting the covered range into 30 1MHz sections provides very fine tuning control. This gives especially good results on the amateur bands which are normally extremely cramped on a typical valve receiver. Main disadvantages of this set are its size and weight, the complexity of its circuit also means some repairs will be difficult.
Restoration: mainly mechanical + 1 leaky capacitor.
Status: working
There seem to have been two versions of the Tiger, the first released in 1930 was an early Superhet design. Presumably there was some problem because it was replaced by the set shown above which is a 3V+rect TRF. This set is the earliest in my collection and is 'interesting' to use because it has no AVC, powerful stations come in loud and distant ones don't. This makes tuning across the band slightly awkward. Sound quality is good and despite being a TRF tuning is sharp enough for all normal use.
Ultra ended their days as part of the BRC - Thorn-EMI combine.
Current Status: Working.
Restoration Problems: HT smoothing capacitors, open circuit resistor,
torn loudspeaker cone, open circuit output transformer.
This set is one of the several FM only sets released by British manufacturers in the fifties. This would have limited this listener to the three BBC stations only, indeed the tuning does not go beyond 101MHz limiting the number of modern stations that can be received. Sound quality it quite good but the AC/DC style circuit gives higher hum levels. As with all FM sets it works best with an external aerial.
Status: Working
Restoration Problems: Leaky Capacitors.
A fairly large battery set, the last Vidor to use octal valves, later sets would use the miniature all-glass type. This set was in very dirty condition, but responded well to cleaning. The sensitivity does not seem as good as the later sets even after full line-up. I wonder if the frame aerial has some shorted turns.
Sound quality is good from the 6" Celestion speaker. Like so many other battery sets the output transformer was open circuit. Fortuanetly this set used a standard size (as opposed to the miniature designs normally found in battery sets), and so replacement was possible.
The fixing of the ivory coloured plastic front panel into the wooden case seems a bit of a bodge and I wonder if the panel was originally designed for a different model. There should also be a leather carrying handle, but unfortuanetly the leather has become too brittle to be used anymore.
Status: Working
Restoration Problems: Leaky Capacitors.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in the 30's they quickly realised the value of radio as a tool for spreading their propaganda. Radios, however were still an expensive luxury. The solution was to get the German radio industry to produce a series of simple sets to a standard pattern to be sold at low cost. The costs were cut by using 20's style simple TRF reaction circuits, using as few valves as possible, moving iron speakers and Bakelite cabinets. As time went on some improvements were made such as fitting a moving coil (dynamic) speaker for improved quality. I suspect the simple circuit was also useful to the authorities as foreign stations would be harder to pick up.
My example is a so-called VE301 Wn Dyn, meaning that it's the AC model with a moving coil speaker. This model was released in 1937.
Front view of the German WW2 Volksempfanger.
Rear view of the same set.
This particular set was made by H Mendes in Dresden (later Nordmende). Unlike the British WW2 utility sets (which used a coding system) the actual manufacturer of each Volkempfänger is clearly marked.
Status: Working
Restoration Problems: Very torn loudspeaker cone, weak output valve.
