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Old 05-24-2017, 04:18 PM
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Josef Josef is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Vienna
Posts: 133
Modified Austrian Prewar Radio

Let's start one more Austrian story. To be honest this story started more than 20 years ago when I was a trainee and radio interested for a Long time of course. I received a catalog which showed many real nice radios which were offered in an auction in the first district of Vienna. I showed this catalog to my trainer and he suggested to buy the radio which I still own. I bought it for big money because of its real nice optical condition.
I also was able to make it work more or less without schematic, Internet or spare tubes. I left this radio in this condition until last summer.
Then (yes only 20 years later) I decided that something had to happen. At first I started a usual prewar radio restoration which means to remove the old tar capacitors and the electrolytics and refill them with new caps. New wires with the right diameter were soldered on before I sealed the caps again. All in all in this radio are more caps built in than in an average TV set. I had to refill about 25 caps what took me many evenings to do.
As you can see on the pictures the underside of the radio looks at least almost as it was built in 1936. Due to the fact that here in Europe are no more German AM stations prewar radios are more or less boring things. O.k. it is possible to listen radio Romania which is an absolute great station with good music program but I wanted more: Using this radio just as an amplifier is possible because it offers a record player pickup input but this is also not what I wanted and expect from a radio.
Randomly I bought a radio which was built in 1949 and had a built in FM module which was built in 1954. Due to the fact that this radio was not in great shape and also is not rare I decided to remove the FM module and built it in into my prewar radio. I know not everyone thinks that changing or adding not original in a rare prewar radio is a good thing. Honestly I also wasn't sure if I did the right thing. On the other hand it was the only way to receive Austrian radio stations and that was the thing the radio was made for.
I also decided that this modification had to be done in the absolute best quality possible. I used new cloth covered cables for example. Originally the module uses a huge power resistor which converts almost 170 Volts @ 100mA to heat what was absolutely unacceptable for me. I modified the circuits of the radio and the FM module slightly to avoid unwanted heat. To activate the FM module you just have to switch the set to Phono (record player pickup input). It is still possible to use the pickup input if a further switch on the backside of the set is activated. Never the less this radio pulls more than 100 Watts out of the mains. I also want to mention that this is an AC/DC serial heater set with one side of the power cord directly connected to the chassis. No question that 230V directly connected to the chassis can kill someone.
One the other hand the sound quality is much better than expected. Especially listening to Jazz is great fun with this set. Bass is a little weak compared to newer sets but anyway. I never will use this radio regularly. Never the less I'm looking for all built in tubes as NOS versions. I already bought most of them but I'm still looking for one or two tubes.
Please let me know your opinion if you like my restoration and modification or not.
Thank's for reading!
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