Philco Jr resurrection

[Peter Heembrock]

I have been away from my hobby for a while since I have been catching up on outdoor projects on our new property here in Nova Scotia. I picked up this Philco Jr ( model 80 ) about 1 year ago on Digby Neck near Sandy Cove. The field coil speaker was missing, the knobs were missing, the dial was missing and the main tuning capacitor was missing. So off I went to my stash of parts radios and I managed to locate similar items that would do the trick. It was a bit difficult to line up the tuning capacitor shaft to match the hole in the cabinet but I came pretty close in the end. We don’t have any local AM stations in my area anymore but I managed to pick up a few from the USA in the evening…this radio is very sensitive when you get the regen control adjustment on the back set just right…this was a very good performing radio back in 1932 and one could not have asked for more based on the very low retail price for one of these…for a 4 tube set it performs very well…
This is not a restoration since I do not have the exact replacement parts and someone had already been in this radio and had removed the filter cap cans etc…so I added some tube sockets for an antenna loading coil and one just for show to fill in the empty space. I am leaving the original grill cloth as is and am not refinishing the cabinet…it shows it age but is not in bad shape for a radio that old.

Attachments:

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   Phil-Jr-back-min-scaled.jpg
   

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   Phil-Jr-chassis-min-scaled.jpg
   

[Dan Walker]

Very good job Peter; The cabinet is better than I expected.
Dan in calgary

[Peter Heembrock]

Thanks…the cabinet is a low cost design so it is fairly thin and not too substantial but does the trick. I used some trade secret on it to bring some colour back but left the scuff marks around the tuning knob and volume knobs to help it show its age of 88 years…

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