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On the side of the road finds?


garyeanderson

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I had an appointment last Thursday morning and as I pulled out of a side street I noticed on my left a box like structure with metal grills sitting on the curb between the side walk and street.

 

This is not the console, just an internet photo from

https://www.antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=234002

which is pretty much what I saw as I drove by except there were no feet.

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I thought I was running behind schedule so I just glanced at it briefly one more time as I was driving by and thought "I'll stop on the way back and have a look". So two hours later I was heading back pulled up to said "box" and I still was not sure what I was looking at and stopped, got out, walked around the back of the box and saw a 5U4 tube and a pair of smaller octal (6v6's) tubes. I dropped the tailgate on the pickup and went back and dragged it over to load, it was not very tall (about half a foot below the tailgate) so I picked up one end and angled it at about 45 degrees and the back corner of the HiFi just reached the tailgate and slid the unit into the bed. I got home and unloaded the console and read the label on the back, which read Silvertone 7061 (in Mahogany), the top was deeply plant stained and it had sat outside for sometime as the sides had the finish lifting, the cabinet most like could have been brought back but it would have been a lot of work and I didn't have the room.   

 https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/sears_roeb_silvertone_7061_52846200_mahogany.html

 

so I ended up with this

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The 5U4 and 6v6's are Realistic branded made in Japan but the rest are the original (from 1957) Silvertone labeled tubes. It is supposed to be about 10 watts, it will make a nice guitar amp even with that big honking power transformer...

 

Gary

 

As brought home, not that ugly really but not the project I wanted to get involved with.

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21 hours ago, Randyh said:

beautiful find , Gary , now make sure the power cable and wiring are not frayed ,  ------and once it is cleaned up and into a decent wood cabinet - it would very nice , it's the tuner on these that is the most beautiful part  , I have a few old tube radios --------there is nothing like the sound of an old radio    , it brings you back to the 60's ---------

Hi Randy

    The pictures are not the cab, what I got is too far gone - the heresy cabs were cream puffs compared to this one. I am guessing it had been on craigslist and not sold so it was put out on the street for trash collection. Unfortunately I don't have the room for the cab so it has ben knocked down and I'll likely use the better plywood parts to build another guitar amp cabinet. The power cord was removed and an IEC electrical jack installed where the two power receptacles were with a fuse holder in place of where the power cord was. Much of the radio tuning parts removed and more will be gone later today when I get back to it. It had 11 tubes when I got it and when I am done it will be down to the 5U4 rectifier, the two 6V6's power tubes, the Silvertone phase splitter 12AX7 and  Silvertone 6AV6 preamp tube. If I don't have enough gain, I switch the 6AV6 for another 12A*7.

    I'll update this topic as I go. I was going to put this in "what I got today" but that seems more of a what I bought today type of thing and this was to be more of road kill topic. I wish I could keep everything I find as original but that is just not the case, my entry hall has two consoles, its 8 by 10 and is filled up :sad:.  

 

Gary

 

Lots of stuff removed that I didn't need

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I got rid of some of brown turds too

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To install a new novell nine pin socket I had to enlarge one of the original holes. Its a pain to do sometimes but this time I was able to remove the plate and clamp a backing piece, mark the location, drill a pilot hole for the 7/8 inch holesaw and make the hole so I could use the original holes that the rivets were installed in. 

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much of the rest was removed and the heater wires re-routed to the new socket.

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more later when I know more - like if the power transformer is any good:unsure2:

 

Gary

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   Got some 22uf electrolytic caps yesterday for the amp yesterday and spent a bit more time cleaning up the unused parts that I didn't need or some that were grossly out of spec. The cathode resistor for the two 6V6's measured 170 ohm where it was supposed to be 220 ohm so out it came. A 33k measured 37k in the voltage divider section and was borderline but it came out too. Once I got the electrolytic caps installed I plugged in the 8 ohm woofer and turned on the switch, wonder of wonders - no smoke and the voltage peak on startup was right around 395 vdc and quickly settled down to 328 volts. Plate voltage on the 6V6's was 320v and the screens were 325v with the cathode right at 19.5 volts DC. There was a bit of noise at times through the speaker (pops and other extraneous sounds) but there was nothing connected to the amp and I just had the power on with the volume all the way down. I had it powered on for about 20 minutes and every thing seemed quite stable. I guess its time to finish the preamp section. I am quite happy with this street find, it's going to make a nice amp... 

 

Gary

 

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2-28-2020 07:30

I got to play with the amp for a bit and it still needs work, the preamp section seems too noisy so I'll spend some more time with it. I had built a pair of cabs out of an old set of draws that my friend had tossed out (the carcass didn't survive the 12 foot drop so well but the draws were mostly ok) , the draws themselves were a very nice white clear poplar and bottoms were good mahogany plywood. All I had to do was find the grill cloth (in the attic out of an old Magnavox hifi) and bolt in the speaker out of the Silvertone to have something to test the amp with.

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Great finds.I have a friend who has to drive around most of the day, and he finds a lot of nice working audio items on the side of the road. He has pretty much built his HT around road finds, and then later he upgrades if needed.

Sent from my SM-T830 using Tapatalk

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