Radiola 33 with Arcturus tubes

[Rob Uthe]

Radiola 33 with intact pot metal trim and 100B speaker. It had been previously painted, so the ugly fake woodgrain finish was already covered. I’ve recapped it and added line filters to get rid of the modulation hum.

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[Rob Uthe]

The cabinet

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[Jean Marcotte]

Rob, you are lucky to get this radio in such a good condition. I am a volunteer at the “Musée des ondes Émile Berliner” in Montreal (sorry for the french but it is how it is called) and we just got a donation a month ago of the same radio with the speaker and the original legs. That radio is in bad condition with the pot metal coming in little pieces. The speaker has also issues with the pot metal. The museum already had a Radiola 33 but with wrong knobs, some issues with pot metal trims and no legs. We just started to figure out how to make one good unit out of the two. Of course, as a museum, we need to keep the “ugly fake woodgrain” finish as good as we can. I will try to keep you posted as we go along.

Cheers

Jean Marcotte
Montreal

https://www.berliner.montreal.museum/site/enindex.html

[Rob Uthe]

Even if I didn’t find the original finish ugly, I would have been out of luck with this one. It was painted in dark brown enamel at some point before I got it. Luckily, it doesn’t seem to be affected by any pot metal rot (a random batch of good metal), so it’ll probably stay like this for a while.

The speaker is working too, and the electronics didn’t require a lot of work. All of the chokes & transformers were good, so that was more luck. To be honest, it sounds great, especially if I hook it up (with a proper transformer) to a modern speaker.

The Arcturus tubes work, but they are more for show and cost a lot more than this radio did, but they are contemporary with the unit. It isn’t a museum-quality restoration, of course.

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