Revelation of the innards

Maybe it was the late hour, maybe it was the emerging regret of tampering with something so ancient, but a combination of reverence and awe settled over me. Seven decades ago, a worker in Camden NJ had assembled these components. My hands were the first to touch this assembly since a worker, most likely passed into the beyond at this point, None the less, I proceeded with the plan.

Nothing will go to waste

The innards, useless to me, are going back into the antique radio ecosystem and will not be lost to time. Each item was removed with care and kept as intact as it was upon receipt. I've felt a sense of remorse in this project - somewhat tempered by the fact the unit was not operational as received, the shell would be kept intact - preserving the style of the time, and that the parts will find uses elsewhere.

Taking apart the case was a lot easier than I thought it would be. Removing several screw on the bottom allowed the entire inside to slide out the back. I had expected it harder to deal with screws and such, but they were snug and easily came out. The seventy years of accumulated grime reflected the age of the device.

The entire internal assembly slides in to the back of the case, and much like a desk drawer, has the rear surface mounted on the assembly. the bottom of the case itself has several grooves to make inserting easy and fool proof.

The back exposes several ports and switches. A switch for radio / phono, a RCA jack for the phono one would assume, and an external antenna connector. Only the latter is attached to the rear plate, the remainder being holes to expose the main assembly.

The antenna is an arrangement of copper wire glued to the back plate, which is fiber board of some sort. I do not believe I will be able to separate them without damaging either part. I may implement an radio to use the antenna as an option. My grandparents always having an AM channel playing in their kitchen comes to mind.

For whoever comes next, so we'll see how that goes, I'm trying to puzzle through what some of this stuff does. For instance, there is a looks like a resistor or something going to A Something attached to the back just Possibly the screw, so the mounting screw or oh. That is for an external antenna, okay?

Other than that, the The mechanism for tuning is really odd. Not a lot, just surprising, I guess it uses a belt to move the needle along the The That, you know, indicator where the stations are. So there's a little pin attached to A Belt, you turn the knob to move the belt back-and-forth.

That belt is actually just a string. That's tied off against a kind of a spring to keep attention, just a neat little way to do it. Also, at the same time, when you do that, it's moving these kind of blades through other blades.

This must be What changes the frequency? Although I'll have to look up and see what exactly that does. I'll say, you know, it's weird taking this apart that the last person to actually put hands-on some of this stuff inside was 75 years ago, and they're probably dead at this point.

So that's weird. I do. Want to save the belt assembly, though, or at least the backing for it.

And possibly the pin I'll get some pictures in a video of that, but I think for today I'm going to try to get off the back plate and maybe some more pictures of the tuning assembly so I can figure out how I would replicate that. I don't quite know Possibly just I don't know, I don't know if to think about that, but this is really odd. The the electronics inside and the bottom are just an amazing Pile of things, Satter together, and I am not sure how somebody There's some of the dials.

All those are the tubes, the giant capacitor whatever that is, I think, is that actually wood? I think it's actually wood is a component in here, which is, I guess normal for the time. I'll get some pictures of the bottom too, but yeah, getting that back off and maybe the plate today and coming up with a plan for How to work the new thing the way it connects into the device is it slides in.

So the entire assembly slides in from the back and the back ends up being the plate that closes it, it doesn't drop down over the top. Of the Assembly, if that makes sense, the case is A box with the back part, open the slides in and out looks like there's some grooves in the channel to hold it, and the numbers for the dialer are actually on the case, whereas the background for the dial and the Well, I'll thingy are on the internal mechanism anyway, pictures to follow. One possible idea is that I could use the external antenna Screw, replace that with a Jack that you can place a 1 inch plug into, although they do also have phono and radio plugs that are ready.

So Oh, no, sorry. That's a switch that switches between phono and radio. Which is probably this other thing in the back, so there is already an external Maybe possibly implement a software to find radio for the external antenna.

We'll see, but the back came off very easily. Leaving just the the thing exposed. I don't think I'm going to take the tuning assembly out, it's Locked in place by the potentiometers for the tuning and the volume.

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