Restoring, maintaining and listening to VINTAGE RADIOS by Lynn Conway


Restoring, maintaining and listening to
VINTAGE RADIOS
by Lynn Conway



Page under construction - - about vintage radio - - - growing up with radio - - impact of the programs - - and of the technology - - how radio helped get me interested in science and engineering - - - my current interest in vintage radios - - a bit about the current clubs and infrastructure for those interested in restoring, using and maintaining vintage radios - -

Many people aren't aware that most of the common vacuum tubes and other key electronic components for these old radios are still available. Thus these radios can often be restored to full working condition, and then maintained and used for listening pleasure. Interestingly, the major sources of many newly manufactured tubes are several factories in Russia. Vacuum tubes never "went out of style" in the old Soviet Union, because of the great lag in their consumer technology compared to the west, where transistor technology made most vacuum tube production facilities obsolete.

For more information about antique radio, see the Michigan Antique Radio Club (MARC) website, which among other things has a great set of links to many web resources regarding antique radios. Among the resources are a number of websites that present many old-time radio programs in streaming MP3 and RealAudio formats. For information and supplies for antique radio restoration, see the Antique Electronic Supply website, which maintains an extensive online catalog of vacuum tubes and all other essentials for radio restoration projects.



The Technology:
The Impact:
The Collectables:

Lynn's 1938 Zenith
Model 10S668 Console Radio.
This 10 tube, 3-band radio
tunes broadcast & shortwave
signals from 550 KHz to 18MHz.

The book Raised on Radio,
by Gerald Nachman,
brings the era of radio back alive.
[Random House, 1998]

To visualize the many collectable antique radios out there, see:
A Flick of the Switch 1930-1950
by Morgan E. McMahon




Circuit diagram for Zenith Model 10S668:
[link to a close-up view]

The Technology:	The Impact:	The Collectables:

Lynn's 1938 Zenith Model 10S668 Console Radio. This 10 tube, 3-band radio tunes broadcast & shortwave signals from 550 KHz to 18MHz.	The book Raised on Radio, by Gerald Nachman, brings the era of radio back alive. [Random House, 1998]	To visualize the many collectable antique radios out there, see: *A Flick of the Switch 1930-1950* by Morgan E. McMahon