1947 Delco R-1243

This hobby started one day as I was listening to a baseball game.  I started thinking about how great it would have been to sit around and listen to a baseball game on an old tube radio.  Later on that week, as I was browsing a nerd site, I saw an article how a guy gutted out an old radio and turned it into an internet radio.  Completely took everything out of it and used a Raspberry Pi to connect to the internet.  I thought this was a complete waste of a collector radio.  So I decided to look around on Ebay and see what kind of radios were out there.  I found out there were hundreds of vintage radios for sale at varying prices.  I ended up finding a table top radio for sale for only $20 and went ahead and bought it.

The cabinet of the radio was in pretty good shape.  Had a few minor dings and was dirty as hell.  It still had the original knobs and glass plate.  Plugged in the radio and all I could hear is a loud hum coming from the speaker.  Before I started working on the electronics I did a lot of research and found out that the humming comes from bad capacitors.  These old radios used wax covered paper capacitors and weren't made to stand the test of time.  Back in the 30's and 40's capacitors were very expensive so manufacturers would put in the cheapest capacitors they could find.  Doing more research I found a website that has schematics for almost all of these old radios.  Went through schematics and figured out what capacitors need replaced and ordered all new ones.  The total for this was around $10.

While I waited on parts to come in I decided to go ahead and start stripping the cabinet.  After that mess was taken care of I sanded the whole radio starting with a rough grit and ended up finishing it with a 220 grit paper.

After the final sanding it was time to do the trim work.  The original trim was black so I decided to keep it at that.

After the trim was done it was time to start staining.  The natural wood had a reddish color that I really liked and wanted to try and incorporate that.  After walking around at Lowes with my brother I ended up going with a red mahogany stain.  It only took 1 coat to get the desired color I wanted.

With all that done there was nothing left to do but clear the radio for a nice smooth finish.  I used a nice spray on lacquer to try and keep everything as original as I could.  I ended up getting about 12 coats out of one can and decided to stop there.  I still might end up adding more clear to get that glass look.

In the middle of doing all the woodwork I had received all the parts I had ordered.  I went ahead and added all the new capacitors in (pain in the a**) and put on a new power cord.  The old cords tend to dry rot easily and are not very safe.

Time for the moment of truth.  I turned the radio on and waited for all the tubes to warm up.  Static.  No humming!!!  Turned the tuner knob and was able to tune in numerous radio stations.  The speaker itself was in decent shape and only had a few hair line tears.  Rubber cement took care of these easily.

During all of my research I had found out that a lot of people were adding auxiliary ports to these radios to listen to MP3 players.  Since I had everything working I figured I would try it out.  This proved to be the most challenging thing for me.  I knew it was as simple as just taping into the volume control because it's just an analog signal.  I made a couple of trips to Radio Shack buying mono 1/8 jacks and none of them would work for me.  Frustrated I got onto my computer to see what I could be doing wrong.  It all came down to a simple mistake.  I was using a stereo cable (L and R) on a mono plug and my signal was grounding out.  Went back down to Radio Shack found the stereo jack I needed and put it in.  Worked beautifully.  Here's all the pictures of the completed project.

New grill cloth.

Everything together and working.

Cleaned chassis with the aux port.

My favorite part.  I love the look of the glass at night.