RCA Victor Model 122 restored

[Gary Albach]

Last September Jean Marcotte posted pictures of an RCA Victor Model 122 that he had just acquired, and I promised to post pictures of mine once I finished the restoration. So here it is.

Jean – As you can see, I had to strip the cabinet on mine and then I decided to tint it back to its original colours with Mohawk toners. Final topcoat was semigloss cellulose lacquer over gloss, rubbed out with pumice and water, then paste wax. Grill cloth brightened right up with gentle brushing and Spot Shot carpet cleaner. (Thanks, Gerry O. for that tip.) Added wireless Bluetooth so our kids might have some interest in it!

Dan – I see that you have recently acquired a Model 118. Looking forward to pictures as you get into it.

Gary

Attachments:

1. 

   RCA-Victor-122_front-original.jpg
   

2. 

   IMG_5577-s.jpg
   

3. 

   RCA-Victor-122_front-scaled.jpg
   

4. 

   RCA-Victor-122_back.jpg
   

[Dan Walker]

Gary, you did very nice job on the radio. It looks like it is new.
The knobs are quite different than the model 118 I have Are your knobs original?
I have finished recapping my 118 , but will have to wait until spring to get to the cabinet.

I didn’t have any problems with the recap once I found the schematics showing the actual wiring layout, because the caps did not have any markings on them that I could get the values from.
Once again good job on yours.
Dan in Calgary

[Gary Albach]

Thanks, Dan. The restoration came out pretty close to my desire to restore my collection back to factory look and performance, for both the cabinets and the chassis’.
The attached photos show how the chassis came out.

The knobs are original. After stripping, I toned them back to their original colour and painted in the black centers.

Those RCA wax capacitors with only a code number on them are really a pain, aren’t they. The table in my previous post was my way of trying to gather together the value of these caps. Before I restuffed them, i checked their values, and while they were all leaky, they did all test with the correct values according to the schematic.

Gary

Attachments:

1. 

   RCA-122_Wiring_as-received_s.jpg
   

2. 

   RCA-122_Wiring_new_s.jpg
   

3. 

   RCA-122_restuffing-scaled.jpg
   

[Dan Walker]

Did you re stuff EVERY cap, including the small ones?
I usually don’t re stuff the caps, but each of us has our own way of restoring the radios.
I looked on the internet and see that your knobs are original.
Dan in Calgary.

[Gary Albach]

Hi Dan – yes, I restuffed all the wax paper caps, except the blue Solar. I still haven’t found a way to reliably restuff Solars, so I replaced it with a restuffed period Sprague. I left all the micas alone.
Three of the electrolytics are in a square steel box, securely soldered to the top of the chassis. Opening this box would have required some serious work with my Dremel which I wasn’t sure I could hide, so I decided to fabricate a silver cardboard box to look like a replacement filter cap of the era and located it under the chassis directly under the original caps. You can see the end of it with wires emerging at the bottom of one of the pictures.

And thanks for confirming that the knobs on my set are original. I was pretty sure that they are because they were a bit difficult to get off, and also that they are quite unique. The tuning (second from right) is a dual knob with concentric shafts, one larger than the other. And the volume (second from left) is a single knob, machined to look like the dual knob.

Gary

Attachments:

1. 

   Filter-caps-for-RCA-122-scaled.jpg
   

[Gerry O’Hara]

The radio looks great Gary! – excellent job on both the cabinet and chassis. I particularly like that 10Kohms Ohmite resistor (looks familiar…).

Gerry

[Gary Albach]

Thanks, Gerry. And thanks for the resistor – sticks out like a sore thumb, doesn’t it! If I ever go back in there I’ll paint it with black heat-resistant paint to make it look more original.

[Gerry O’Hara]

By the way, whats the problem in stuffing a Solar cap? If there is a problem, how about repro’ing the artwork and making replacement ones? (mind you, its a service replacement anyway, so why bother…).

[Gary Albach]

Gerry, you’re right, the only way to reliably deal with Solar cap restorations is to reproduce them from scratch. I don’t know a way to restuff them. Solar caps aren’t constructed from a cardboard tube but are molded from a brittle plastic or hard wax material, covered by a very thin paper label. I’ve tried drilling out the centre but just shattered the body material, so I took a shortcut here and restuffed an old Sprague as a replacement.

I’ve still got the original cap so will soak off the label, scan it for future use, and then repro a cap by applying the label around a new cardboard tube with a new poly cap inside. Another reason to go back inside this chassis and tidy up the details!

Do any other folks have scans of paper labels that we could perhaps collect on the website?
Gary

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