STC 543 Restoration
Remember when the humble wireless used to be a significant piece of furniture?? There was no such thing as a television, and the family used to sit gathered around the radio listening to radio shows - and there were some famous ones we still talk of today - the infamous 1938 broadcast of alien invaders, Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, or later all through the 1950's Eccles, Count Moriaty, Bluebottle (the Goons) graced (??!!?!) the airwaves across Australia, Europe and most of the world.
I must confess that all of these things were before my time - but I must also confess to listing to original recordings of these shows through my old AM radios. I have a great little AM transmitter - The Spitfire - which I use to transmit the recordings through my house and listen to them on my old valve radios.
Here are a few pictures of one such radio I have awaiting restoration.
I'm not entirely sure of the exact date just yet - but I've narrowed it down to either 1939 or 1940. Just after the Orson Welles broadcast.
I like to think that this radio might have played that famous Orson Wells show all those years ago - I imagine the thoughts of the listeners, gathererd around listening to what they believed was the invasion of the Earth by Martians.
Perhaps even at 11:15am on September 3, 1939, it even sounded the words of Neville Chamberlain when he announced, "I am speaking to you from the cabinet room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British ambassador in Berlin handed the German government a final note stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and that consequently this country is at war with Germany."
Radio really has sounded some of the most historical moments in the history of the world.
Lets hope I can restore this one to it's former glory.
18 March 2025
I've started stripping down the cabinet. As much as I really wanted to get stuck into the radio itself, my radio repair knowledge is almost non-existant, so I figured there was less chance of me killingmyself with high voltage shocks if I was just working on the woodwork while I done a bit more study on radio repair.
Having said that - I have had a "look" at the radio and see the tuning drum is completely useless, the pot-metal has disintergrated with time so I will need to get something done about that, ie; get some kind of a replacement made, or source an old one out of a parts radio. Similarly, the pot-metal ummmmm, gizmo that secures the tuning shaft where it goes though the woodwork is also beyond salvation, so that too will need to be replaced.
I can also see someone has been inside the radio before me. There are some newish....or rather quite old capacitors in there that although quite old, don't appear to be the original ones. If I had to guess, I'd say they were replace in about the 60s or 70s. And at least one of the capacitors seem to have been disconnected totally but left in place and replaced with anothert capacitor wired in elsewhere......I think.
Anyway - that is all for the future. I'm going to work on the Cabinet first.
Although now that I am thinking about it - that seems like a fairly risky approach.....what if I competely finish the cabinet and I can't get the radio going....which is at least a good possibility.
I was quite surprised by how it looked after I stripped the finish off one of the top sections.
The grain is much more visible and nothing like what I expected. I think the original finish (laquer??) has darkened considerably with age and hidden the original grain. It will be interesting to see what the rest of it looks like after I strip the original finish.
More to come - I'll post some more photos as I strip the original finish.
And in the mean time - I will start looking at the Schematic - to see if I can figure anything out.
I'm also working through Michael Caldera's videos (YouTube - Electronics Old and New) - he has a really good series on Learning Radio REstoration from scratch, which is exactly what I need.