Dirty Thirties TRF

The brand is a bit of a mystery, it’s very similar to some Halsom/Emerson/Pacific/Climax radios. Most of these are kinda the same minus the particular ballast tube/pilot light combination.

It has a 6D6 6C6 43 25z5 K55H tube compliment.

I’ve started to clean it up, it’s a bit of a mess underneath so it might be easier just to rewire it to whatever schematic most fits rather than trying to figure out what they have done.

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So far the 25M(thousand ohm) volume pot/switch needs to be replaced. I may use individual components for this.

Some of the parts are being cleaned with the ultrasonic. (Alcohol) Hopefully I won’t damage anything, I was a little concerned about  the upper coil.

The rest of the parts are being cleaned with either magic eraser or automotive clay.

I’m not sure if I will restore the case or not. At the very least it needs a crack repaired. I may make a different case, either wood or 3D printed. I may make a “fantasy” style case similar to those colourful rare retro radios.

Here is a shot of the underside. As you can see it’s got a lot going on for such a simple little amp. Loose leads, possible changes etc. as mentioned above.

One thing that I am not sure of is whether this model had a band switch or not. I only think that because of the second hole at the back of chassis. I guess the switch would typically be on the front anyways.

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Here it is cleaned up a bit.

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I’ve decided just to redo most of the wiring to make things easier for me, all the original wires are red.

So far I’ve done orange for the heaters, blue is 120v, white is the dial lights and black for a bit of intermediate RF wiring to the bottom coil.
I have some yellow and my own red that I will assign to whatever is left. I’ve since learned that blue is typically used for the antenna wiring, but I will leave it as is for this one.

There is still a few more caps to remove, but I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself.

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