Tuning a 1920s three dialer radio
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ย. 2024
- In the early to mid 1920s after the time station KDKA began regular broadcasting, radio stations began to pop up all over the country and sales of radio sets skyrocketed up to tens of thousands of sets sold every year. The typical "three dialer set" like the one I show in this video became commonplace and could be seen in most households. In this video I hope to show how it must have been to carefully rotate the dials, hear some programming in the midst of the hetrodyne and noise and then try to fine tune it to a good listening level. Usually (from what I have read) only one person in the household was designated to be the tuner of the radio. This Continental Master radio that I show in this video was one of many off brand inexpensive radios sold in the 1920s. A radio like this one could probably have been sold in hardware stores as well as general merchandise stores. It may have been marketed in mail order catalogues.
I am amazed as well. Most of the 1920s radios I collected had open audio transformers but this one was good all the way around. The best part is that when it was new it was just a cheapie you could probably buy in a local hardware store.
You can tune a radio but you can't tuna fish.
Krakolio And- Don't lift that jukebox mother you're too old to carry a tune.
It must be great listening to all those 1920s radio stations.
You definitely understand what early radio was by tuning in a 1920's TRF Three Dialer. Very nice find and it looks great. I'm sure it sounds like it did back in the 1920's. Nice tubes too.
LOL ! keep at it, you'll get the hang of it. Hint, close all 3 tuning condensers completely, and then make sure the dials are all set to the same 0 or 100 position, after that, move them all in small increments of only 1 or 2 notches up or down, and when you get a station, then fool around very slightly with each until it comes in best. I have been collecting antique radios for more than half a century now, so I have some experience using these types of radios.
Thanks for the advice. I think I missed something in this radio when I went through the circuitry but this is a few years ago. Perhaps I should revisit it again. BTW as a "half century radio collector" I was surprised to not find any videos on your channel related to antique radios. It would be nice to see your collection.
Yes I suppose. What might be "crap" to one person is another person's treasure. To a rich man who could afford the best, this radio would be viewed as crap. To a man of minimal means, saving up to buy this radio and eventually owning it was a real high point in life for him. It is often true that those who can buy the very best take what they have for granted and get less enjoyment from it than a person who works hard to earn the money to buy something they really want such as this radio.
Albeit very low in dynamic audio frequency range. I'll soon be posting a video that involves my replacing a broken 1920s speaker in a nice cabinet with a more modern PM voice coil speaker. Thanks for watching.
Just amazing that worked as you found it. Very nice radio and looks really fun to use, Imagine the wonder of a young boy hearing for the first time a live 1920's Yankee's game on it with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig playing. Such a simple time, but a wonderful one.
When you play with equipment that is from the days of old, you kind of get the feeling you are traveling to the past. Thanks for watching.
Thanks for watching Rick. That 85+ year old radio was pretty much a hardware store cheapie when it was new but I was amazed that all I had to do to it was just clean up some connections to get it playing. Gary
yes the more modern radios did eliminate the squealing on VHF,MW, and LW
but you still get a lot of that same squealing on the shortwave bands, great vid.
This was a cool find and a cool demonstration. I have one of these old sets I found in a basement decades ago. Seems in nice shape, but alas, the tubes were gone. Did come with an old ray o vac battery with a 1928 expiration date though. Thanks again for posting this!
Most of these old 1920s battery set radios can be restored. The 201a tubes show up often on eBay.
@@HD7100 That's good to know. It's in a coffin looking case, no identification. Always figured it was a kit.
It's fun to work with the pioneer technology that has all lead up to what we have today. I am thinking of venturing into working on the old TVs I have. Thanks for watching and for the nice comment. Gary
Hi seems such a simple step looking back now to gang the three tuning caps but then I suppose introduces the added problems of alignment for the average non technical user of the time. Excellent video thanks.
Hi and thanks for watching. Tuning one of these radios not only involves adjusting the three tuning dials but also increasing or decreasing the rheostat that feeds the detector filaments. I have read that in those days there was usually one family member who was elected to be the radio tuner-upper. Gary
Think it's fun tuning to hear all those noises then finding a station
It sounds great!
I can hear those CFL’s and fluorescent lights causing a lot of interference and making it harder to tune into a station
Yes that was part of the problem.
Yes. I got the one in this video from the widow of a ham radio silent key. The Atwater Kent 20c I restored I bought at an antique flea market. The Radiola 20 I bought from Ebay. The King radio I bought from and antique store.
Beautiful set that you have demonstrated in this video; it is great to be able to see these early sets come back to life. I have an Atwater Kent 20 Compact which had been left behind by the previous owners of a house that I had moved into in the 1970’s. After replacing an open audio transformer, along with correcting some other issues; and building a power supply to replace the batteries; I enjoy being able to play it to this day. It works well with the Music Master horn I have with it. I also have the larger AK Model 20, which I had obtained at an auction. With it came an original instruction manual and an Atwater Kent radio log. The radio log was a card provided by the Atwater Kent Company, to write down the settings of each dial next to the call letters of each station that one picked up on their radio. That way you would know where to set the dials to easily find a station again. The instruction manual covers both sets that I have. This manual makes a statement,in the section that says how to operate these radios, that is very fitting for this video. “Do not be discouraged if your first attempts at tuning bring more or less disappointing results; practice makes perfect, and in a very short time you should be able to tune in practically any desired station with rapidity and sureness “.
Very interesting to listen to all that hum.
The noise or hum is electrical noise. 1920s TRF radios are prone to picking up electrical noise especially when using a long wire antenna verses a loop antenna.
The RF stages in that radio just can't resist the urge to oscillate!
1. Turn the RF gain down so no whistle. 2. turn last two knobs to same number and wiggle first stage knob left and right around the setting on other knobs. 3. move the right two knobs one notch. 3. repeat around the dial.
You must have experience. I may make another tuneup video of this radio. Thank you. Gary
Yes that would be a good way to tune it. Thanks!
@bad dog Yes they are tricky. My AK-20c tunes very easy. The most difficult to tune is my Radiola 20.
Once something is found at around 9:00, I won't spoil it, but let's just say it could be from long ago also and I was sort of jolted by the mention of a modern name instead of one from back then. It's amazing to hear one of those. My parents found an old philco from the late 30s at an estate sale and it seems so modern compared to this 3 dialer.
Beautiful radio! Since playing with my Freshman Masterpiece, another 3-dialer, I can see why having one tuning knob was a big deal back then. Although tricky to tune, it's all part of the fun. Why else would we spend time with such ancient technology? Lovely!
Amazing specimen👍.
That was great thank you very much!
Thank you for watching.
Remember, it’s 360m for entertainment, 485m for crop & weather reports.
Seriously, though: what is the approximate frequency range? I know some of those early stations used really low frequencies.
They tuned mostly the low end of the 200 meter band.
resulta sumamente instructivo e interesante
The squeals, are they harmonics and birdies ,and osculations internaly? ..I can hear the am carrier too... but the hum,? Is it caps? Or may need some filtering? ..I've never had my hands on one of these and would love to learn the theory of one of these!
The squeals are oscillations in the tube circuits. Early TRF radios can be prone to that. This radio is not well designed.
The other noise such as hum is from outside. In the 1920s there were no wall-wart power supplies or other modern electronic devices to cause interference.
Thanks for the video. It was very educational. Nice demo music.
I was always wondering how you tune those
I recently acquired one of these! I think that the tuning capacitors are rubbing, and I do not know if it is normal. Is there anyone who can help me get this radio working?
You should start with posting a detailed video of your radio and point out the tuning capacitors that you say have plates that are rubbing.
Forgive me for my lack of knowledge, how is it tuning in to such old broadcasted radio stations?
The radio is haunted. (just kidding LOL) I use an AM broadcast transmitter that I built just for this purpose which was to demonstrate what might be heard on a 1925 radio. Check out this video I posted some time ago. th-cam.com/video/-xSJ-uDMN8E/w-d-xo.html
Can you catch some FM stations on it?
Amazing
Great!
All that squealing made it sound like a badly adjusted regenerative radio.
What was the configuration of the radio? It looked like two RF amplifier stages with tuned anodes, a detector followed by two audio stages.
What were the tubes fitted? Back in the 1920s a lot of tubes had bright emitter cathodes. The cathode was basically a tungsten light bulb filament which had to get white hot to be able to emit enough electrons for it to work. (Light emitting diodes are not new, early 20th century thermionic diodes could be just as bright). Dull emitter tubes had been invented with thoriated tungsten filaments which would work without having to get white hot but these tubes tended to be more expensive.
It was common practice to control the gain of the radio by having rheostats in series with the tube filaments. For best results when tuning, reduce the gain as far as possible to eliminate the squealing caused by anode-grid capacitative feedback.
That particular radio is a typical TRF (Tuned Radio Frequency) configuration with five 201a tubes but there was something not right with it. They normally do not squeal as much as this radio does. My 1925 Atwater Kent 20c doesn't squeal at all.
The excessive squealing might be due to faulty supply rail decoupling capacitors. Check if there are any capacitors across the supply rails, especially around the RF amplifier stage(s). If there are you could temporarily fit modern polyester capacitors in parallel with them to see if there is any improvement.
Very possible. I did not go through the radio as thoroughly as I could have done. I'll possibly get to it again but I have several other projects to go through first.
I learned morse in the early 1960s but forgot a lot of it today. As an amateur radio enthusiast, I ws probably quite "HAM" fisted on the key. Gary
WOW
if i was to buy one of these.. it would pick up am ?
Bob's first video
th-cam.com/video/vrbd95fuBTo/w-d-xo.html
hows that squealing produced?
HI,, if you don't mind, I've posted to Pedrazza's Radio Shack on Face book.. Awsome
No Problem and thanks for watching. Gary
Complicated
Yes many models of 1920s readios were often quite complicated to tune up.
HD7100 what kind if antenna did it use? Was it on the Standard 540-1600 AM band? Or was it only up to 1500 back then?