New proect! 1953 Hoffman Television Super Receiver Mark V Tv Phono Radio Console

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Yamamaya42

have only found 3 really bad resistors, but replacing them has not helped.

new tubes on the way
6BA6 1st/2nd am/fm IF and AM RF amp, 6BE6. FM OSC and AM conv. and 12AT7 FM RF AMP/MIXER.
if this does not get the radio working, I will just give up on it. as the TV was the main goal anyway.

Is the radio working at all, or is it completely silent? If it is still silent after you replace the tubes you mentioned, I would check one more thing before giving up: the antenna connections. If these are disconnected or the antenna itself has a poor or outright open connection, your set's radio will not work at all, unless you are in an extremely strong signal area, and even then you may receive only a small number of stations. However, as I said, the first thing I would do would be to replace the three tubes you mentioned, as one of them may be weak or burned out. If any of the tubes you mention are defective in any way, you will either lose reception altogether or, if you hear anything, the signals will be very weak and noisy.

The radio in your Hoffman console should work very well, as the set was made in 1953, when not every city or town in the United States had local radio. Because of this, the sets had to be, and generally were, built for DX (reception of radio stations located some distance from the set's own location); this is why I say the radio in your console should, indeed must, work almost exceedingly well. In radio's very early days, the first sets were crystal sets with no amplification, so a very good antenna had to be used in order to get any reception at all. My first crystal set was hooked up to a 50-foot (more or less) long-wire antenna and received one local station located only a mile or two from where I lived at the time. However, I will never forget one night right after that station signed off for the night (it was a 500-watt daytime-only operation in a Cleveland suburb). I heard the local station sign off, then, to my dumbfounded surprise, I heard, very weakly, one or two local Cleveland stations in my headphones, one on top of the other (crystal radios are anything but selective).