I have watched many of your radio restoration videos. This was the absolutely best one you have done yet! Your depth of experience is always evident, especially so in this video. I work on radios as a hobby. Your straightforward approach has encouraged me and I suspect many others. Thanks so much. And don’t let the ‘getting old’ stuff bother you. I experience it too, but persistence overcomes!
It’s not an old man thing because I’m only 44 years old and I do worse than that all the time even though I’m an electronics technician fixing eScooters every day, I wish I had a quarter of your ability and talent and the guts to wear a dress, not that it would interest me to do so, that’s something I truly admire about you, your comfort within your own skin and being yourself, abilities aside your an individual and you truly do what you feel is you and how you want yourself to be, look like and enjoy your hobbies that are highly technical and actually beneficial because you repair stuff that would end up in landfill, I do the same and it’s a very useful and prized talent, people these days are getting so far away from being hands on it’s a little scary, especially if for some reason we end up in another world war, people like you and me will thrive and be super self sufficient and very valuable to many others and in turn be looked after, don’t even change who you are, because I am a Cat person as well, so it makes me feel joy when I see you interact with puss because I can tell a person is kind and caring just in the way they interact with their Cat, I have very little patience for dogs as I find them a little pathetic and always needing reassurance and can’t think for themselves unlike a free thinking and free spirited independent feline, thanks for sharing your amazing talents and especially your pleasant personality and temperament it’s a real joy and treat. 👍🏻🇦🇺🇺🇸
Another fine piece of vintage electronics saved from the dumpster and resorted to a thing of beauty. Your skills and knowledge are mind boggling.. Thank you for sharing it all with us.
Great restore work ,i have never seen one of these radio until now,You must have a fantastic collection of radios maybe might see them in one of ur videos.Happy days to you.
cooking with Ron ''350 degrees 2-3 hours'' ''smells great Ron what you got in the oven?'' ''antique radio parts'' OH OKAY lol '(laughing) ' this toaster oven is toast '' fantastic could watch your vids all day.....
Here’s a coincidence. I watched your video within a few hours of it coming up. Then today I picked up Silicon Chip, an Australian electronics magazine, and they feature the restoration of the exact same radio. They also had to get the rosin out of the catacomb, which they did with a sharp wire, and repair broken wires in addition to rewinding a coil. Theirs didn’t have the original audio transformers, but they did have two replacements that would fit it. These gave very good results despite the DC resistances being much lower. They noted that the rosin shrinks and cracks with age, breaking the wires in the process. A lovely restoration of a very interesting early set.
I'm binge watching your videos while recovering from Covid. Time and time again your projects present problems or complications that would cause a mere mortal (like me) to give up. It's inspiring to see how you use your knowledge, experience and creativity to persevere and conquer!
glad to see your still working your magic, will watch this straight away ,, Always an education to watch your videos. PAUL at Ipswich.. Suffolk,, Great Britain !!
Love the way your using surface mount tech with valves. Got a wireless set 18 wwii British back pack radio . You inspired me to get it working. Thanks Ron.
This is one magnificent restoration! I never knew of this radio, It probably looks and works better than when new. Wish I had your talent and patience with antique equipment.Thankyou for this wonderful video, Walt in Miami
One of the best restorations I've seen to date. It kept my attention from start to end. I really liked the valve replacement. Very nice job done all round. A pleasure to watch.
Wonderful way to preserve knowledge of how to repair these old radio's. Keep it going..! I would like to see a video of the instruments your are using, like the tube tester and power supply. How these are constructed, diagram etcetera. No doubt they work perfectly.
Back in the late 50s, early 60s my father use to repair quite a few radios from the 30s and 40s, by the mid 60s prices came down and these older radios were all but junked, replaced by the newer more reliable and cheaper transistor equipment. It's strange to think I'm watching someone repair something which I'd seen repaired over 50 years ago and back then it looked old
Magnificent work Ron and what a lovely old radio. Lots of stuff I've learnt from you over the years goes into my own radio restores. All the best from the other side of the pond.
Have you ever made..or thought about making a video of your collection....it would be a very intense video...thanks for all you've done, you are an AMAZING person.
I just need to tell you i am so very happy that you have chosen to put more videos on your channel. I'm sure you know this - the young people do not care about any of this stuff. If it is about the new phone or etc, Had you and YT been around in my youth. I could have done so much better in my career in electronics. Maybe it is just me - but i doubt it. What you put out here on YT i have huge respect for, and hope that you will continue to post. I see and give the nod to your attire. No shock no bad thoughts. If this is what you do - i'm fine with that. Your brain is full of amazing things - that i hope you will share. I respect what your choices are. Furthermore, i respect you. Please do not go away again.
I don't really go away! I have MANY other things to do so I get caught up so busy I can't do a video for a month or two. Our radio club tried to get some local kids interested in antique radio. Out of 12 kids that showed up only one took interest. The rest sat around fiddling with their phones! I have no answer for this.
@@glasslinger phones are an addiction. I am also convinced they are used to keep tabs on us. Question for you : Would you do a repair by mail in ? It is a late 50's multi band hallicrafters. It's built along the lines of an all american 5 - simple. It has a bfo for ssb. The hard part is getting the sensitivity even on all the bands. At the moment if no test equipment.
@@glasslinger I understand. I just thought i would ask. I have no access to my test equipment or a suitable bench or i would take care of it myself. I already have a receiver in pieces, waiting for parts. Easy fix. The Hallicrafters radio will need quite a bit. Not going to be able to pull off a re alignment of the bands without my stuff. Anyhow, thank you for the response. Have a good
Wish I have a pound for every time i yanked a meter off like that. I could afford a new car.i do like the little comments you put in explaining things.
Really learning a lot, I work on slightly newer stuff such as Drake and KW Electronics stuff, the stuff you do is amazing though, please keep up the great work
I have made uv199 tubes in my tube lab but it is a very intense process due to the close spacing of the elements. I find it easier to use the pencil tubes like in the video. 199 type tubes are still quite common and low cost, ( not like WD-11 at $100 each) so making 199's for sale is not practical.
This is very good. I'ma bout to tackle a tar potted in open AK F2 speaker field coil that goes with my 46 radio. I have a rarely used toaster oven. This will get it out of it's case. The speaker voice coil was also open, I found a break in a wire splice solder joint in the wire under some tape going from the speaker wire terminal on the way to the voice coil, that's fixed. I hope to get lucky again fixing the field coil. Assuming I do fix it the remaining question is whether I should re-pot with the tar or leave it out. Thank you for your excellent how-to videos!
Allegedly to "seal out moisture" but also to prevent people from being able to reverse engineer the then-new and recently-patented superheterodyne circuit design. An early example of proprietary electronic design by a corporation.
CrazyLabs , If you enjoy this video, try Mr Carlson's Lab, another Patreon channel, but done with a bit more care for details from the era. Be especially careful with Paul's constant reminders about safety in the lab.
Wow, really complex circuit! The first tube is a reflex RF/IF amplifier, the second tube is a reflex OSC / Mixer (autodyne mixer), the third tube is the second IF/first AF amp, the 4th tube is a detector, 5th and 6th tubes are AF amplifiers. (I think I got that all right).
Amazing as always, Ron. At the time of manufacture, what was RCA's stated purpose for potting everything in resin, and was it unique to RCA, or was it a common practice in the period?
This was unique to RCA. Atwater Kent potted power supplies and transformers in tar. The RCA catacombs was meant to be a "standard" superhet system that could be mounted in many different radio models. As it turned out, it was way more expensive than other construction methods so it was quickly discontinued.
Wow, you have some of the oldest radios on TH-cam. Lots of tubes! Too many for a simple TRF, is this an early superhet? I suspect that the reason your substitute tube doesn't work in the RF,IF and OSC stages is because of the capacitor from the screen to ground. If you put an RF choke in series with the 47K resistor, I bet that the tube might work in those stages.
Hi there, by coincidence there's an article in the latest Australian Silicon Chip Magazine (August 2019) by Dennis Jackson which describes the restoration of one of these radios. In that set the audio transformers had gone open and one of the RF coils had to be rewound. He also had problems in removing the resin. He also suggests that the catacomb was potted to discourage copying. Cheers Doug.
Man whoever came up with that catacomb idea just caused a ton of problems. It's not like any decent company wouldn't have been able to dismantle the catacomb and reverse engineer the radio. It just caused tons of servicing issues for 100 years and counting
Quicker, and cheaper to assemble the radio if it all goes in the soup rather than building individual sealed components. I'm sure after hearing enough complaints from the service people is when they changed their mind.
No one can compare to the work you do,your a genius
Don't forget shango066
I have watched many of your radio restoration videos. This was the absolutely best one you have done yet! Your depth of experience is always evident, especially so in this video. I work on radios as a hobby. Your straightforward approach has encouraged me and I suspect many others. Thanks so much. And don’t let the ‘getting old’ stuff bother you. I experience it too, but persistence overcomes!
It’s not an old man thing because I’m only 44 years old and I do worse than that all the time even though I’m an electronics technician fixing eScooters every day, I wish I had a quarter of your ability and talent and the guts to wear a dress, not that it would interest me to do so, that’s something I truly admire about you, your comfort within your own skin and being yourself, abilities aside your an individual and you truly do what you feel is you and how you want yourself to be, look like and enjoy your hobbies that are highly technical and actually beneficial because you repair stuff that would end up in landfill, I do the same and it’s a very useful and prized talent, people these days are getting so far away from being hands on it’s a little scary, especially if for some reason we end up in another world war, people like you and me will thrive and be super self sufficient and very valuable to many others and in turn be looked after, don’t even change who you are, because I am a Cat person as well, so it makes me feel joy when I see you interact with puss because I can tell a person is kind and caring just in the way they interact with their Cat, I have very little patience for dogs as I find them a little pathetic and always needing reassurance and can’t think for themselves unlike a free thinking and free spirited independent feline, thanks for sharing your amazing talents and especially your pleasant personality and temperament it’s a real joy and treat. 👍🏻🇦🇺🇺🇸
Well said. Glasslinger is most definitely a gem of TH-cam.
Glass linger your vintage RCA AR 812 AM tubes receiver is awesome my friend 🎉🎉🎉🎉
Another fine piece of vintage electronics saved from the dumpster and resorted to a thing of beauty. Your skills and knowledge are mind boggling.. Thank you for sharing it all with us.
Glass linger you are good at restoring vintage radios and vintage TVS my friend 🎉🎉🎉🎉
Hey Ron, how about a video showing off your collection? I sure its almost as amazing as you are!
I love your videos.They are true restoration classes. Congratulations for the work and thanks a lot for showing!
Great restore work ,i have never seen one of these radio until now,You must have a fantastic collection of radios maybe might see them in one of ur videos.Happy days to you.
cooking with Ron ''350 degrees 2-3 hours'' ''smells great Ron what you got in the oven?'' ''antique radio parts'' OH OKAY lol '(laughing) ' this toaster oven is toast '' fantastic could watch your vids all day.....
Ron, my mouth fell open watching you do this. Truly stunning.
Here’s a coincidence. I watched your video within a few hours of it coming up. Then today I picked up Silicon Chip, an Australian electronics magazine, and they feature the restoration of the exact same radio. They also had to get the rosin out of the catacomb, which they did with a sharp wire, and repair broken wires in addition to rewinding a coil. Theirs didn’t have the original audio transformers, but they did have two replacements that would fit it. These gave very good results despite the DC resistances being much lower. They noted that the rosin shrinks and cracks with age, breaking the wires in the process. A lovely restoration of a very interesting early set.
I'm binge watching your videos while recovering from Covid. Time and time again your projects present problems or complications that would cause a mere mortal (like me) to give up. It's inspiring to see how you use your knowledge, experience and creativity to persevere and conquer!
This really amazes me every time you bring one of these antique radios back to life thank you for sharing
Love watching your videos. Full of hints and tips, fantastic finished items. Enjoy your upbeat approach to life. Thanks for sharing.
glad to see your still working your magic, will watch this straight away ,, Always an education to watch your videos. PAUL at Ipswich.. Suffolk,, Great Britain !!
Nice looking radio love that deep brown stain thanks for the deep inside the catacombs look.
Love the way your using surface mount tech with valves. Got a wireless set 18 wwii British back pack radio . You inspired me to get it working. Thanks Ron.
I have one of the 812s in the shop and oneday will get to it.. Thanks for the tip on modifying the tube...
Very enjoyable. Please keep the videos coming. Thanks Ron!
Another wonderful rebuild Ron thanks from the UK
Excellent restoration of a truly beautiful radio. Thank you glasslinger..
This is one magnificent restoration! I never knew of this radio, It probably looks and works better than when new. Wish I had your talent and patience with antique equipment.Thankyou for this wonderful video, Walt in Miami
One of the best restorations I've seen to date. It kept my attention from start to end. I really liked the valve replacement. Very nice job done all round. A pleasure to watch.
Every video of your work is a treat for me.
A wonderful restoration, enjoyable to watch. Thanks for sharing with us Ron.
You Ron are a Amazing Person God Bless
Glasslinger has another new video out? Christmas in July!
Wonderful way to preserve knowledge of how to repair these old radio's. Keep it going..! I would like to see a video of the instruments your are using, like the tube tester and power supply. How these are constructed, diagram etcetera. No doubt they work perfectly.
WOW. Talk about having your act together. Thank-You very much for posting and sharing your expertise.
Glass linger your utube videos are awesome my friend 🎉🎉🎉
Back in the late 50s, early 60s my father use to repair quite a few radios from the 30s and 40s, by the mid 60s prices came down and these older radios were all but junked, replaced by the newer more reliable and cheaper transistor equipment.
It's strange to think I'm watching someone repair something which I'd seen repaired over 50 years ago and back then it looked old
Magnificent work Ron and what a lovely old radio. Lots of stuff I've learnt from you over the years goes into my own radio restores. All the best from the other side of the pond.
over an hour as passed in what seems like a no time at all your videos are gripping thank you so much for posting.
Have you ever made..or thought about making a video of your collection....it would be a very intense video...thanks for all you've done, you are an AMAZING person.
I'm making the video now. It is a HUGE collection so this is not a trivial piece of work!
I just need to tell you i am so very happy that you have chosen to put more videos on your channel. I'm sure you know this - the young people do not care about any of this stuff. If it is about the new phone or etc, Had you and YT been around in my youth. I could have done so much better in my career in electronics. Maybe it is just me - but i doubt it. What you put out here on YT i have huge respect for, and hope that you will continue
to post. I see and give the nod to your attire. No shock no bad thoughts. If this is what you do - i'm fine with that. Your brain is full of amazing things - that i hope you will share. I respect what your choices are. Furthermore, i respect you. Please do not go away again.
John Robinson, Agreed.
I don't really go away! I have MANY other things to do so I get caught up so busy I can't do a video for a month or two. Our radio club tried to get some local kids interested in antique radio. Out of 12 kids that showed up only one took interest. The rest sat around fiddling with their phones! I have no answer for this.
@@glasslinger phones are an addiction. I am also convinced they are used to keep tabs on us. Question for you : Would you do a repair by mail in ? It is a late 50's multi
band hallicrafters. It's built along the lines
of an all american 5 - simple. It has a bfo
for ssb. The hard part is getting the sensitivity even on all the bands.
At the moment if no test equipment.
Sorry, I have no time for repair work. I get many requests. Too many irons in the fire already.
@@glasslinger I understand. I just thought i would ask. I have no access to my test equipment or a suitable bench or i would take care of it myself. I already have a receiver in pieces, waiting for parts.
Easy fix. The Hallicrafters radio will need
quite a bit. Not going to be able to pull off a
re alignment of the bands without my stuff.
Anyhow, thank you for the response.
Have a good
Nice looking radio and another excellent restoration i alway's enjoy your video's keep up the good work sir.
That looks beautiful - great video, thank-you!
One of the best things to clean up pine tar/rosin is denatured alcohol. Much nicer to work with than most of the alternatives.
Ethyl acetate works great too. Though if you want to clean up a mix of rosin and beeswax, turpentine is the best bet.
Great video Ron ,I have never seen that type or radio before .Thank you for the education
and yet again, you smash it out of the park with your amazing genius. I love the work you do.
Always impressed by your knowledge....👍👍
Great VIDEO, AS ALWAYS, why would anyone give this video or any video's of glasslinger's a thumbs down
Wish I have a pound for every time i yanked a meter off like that. I could afford a new car.i do like the little comments you put in explaining things.
What a talent...excellent!
Always learn from your videos. Thanks so much for sharing. Love the kitty shots! :-)
really great to see you back , love your channel
what a gem this turned out to be. Thanks for sharing!!
Wonderful! Can the pinot bexternally jumped?
Excellent work. Your knowledge of electronics is amazing. The shop foreman is a cat!
cool another great video
What a tedious job! Wonderful workmanship, amazing! Walt in Miami
Super Cool. I've been watching your vids ever since the Westinghouse Refrigerator Vid.
A very good video as always Ron. 👍
Old inkjet printer are a great source for salvaging rubber bushings of various sizes like the ones you need for this radio. Nice job btw.
I thought this episode is a joke about the oven 😆
I was completely taken in by the thumbnail, thinking that was an exotic RCA radio that I hadn't seen before.
Good job! Question, WHY did they pot the can with that pine tar? Why?!?!.!?!
I’m asking myself the same thing. Rigidity maybe?
You did a really nice job! Thank you for sharing...
Another great job from the master.
Am i looking forward to this. Always enjoy your restores. Here goes.
Please, make a video showing your radio collection.
what an awesome looking radio, well done
I always find your videos such an inspiration. Many thanks.
Really learning a lot, I work on slightly newer stuff such as Drake and KW Electronics stuff, the stuff you do is amazing though, please keep up the great work
Great job, enjoyed this video
Very good looking radio, I would love to see a video of your radio collection!!
Glass linger the vintage rca ar 812 the radio cabinet looks like new 🎉🎉🎉🎉
And works!
The man with the golden tubes
Mind boggling stuff. Certainly earned your money on that one.
Next time you can try and make some UV199 tubes!
Great video as usual
I have made uv199 tubes in my tube lab but it is a very intense process due to the close spacing of the elements. I find it easier to use the pencil tubes like in the video. 199 type tubes are still quite common and low cost, ( not like WD-11 at $100 each) so making 199's for sale is not practical.
Ron, great tutorial as always. Looked like a meat loaf stuffed into the oven, probably didn't have the aroma of one......
first time I've seen his channel - the video was very interesting - you have a new subscriber
your knowledge is amazing, would love to see an tour of your collection
yes
Excelente saludos de Santiago de Chile 🇨🇱
Man I would like for all my hifi equipment to look like this radio.
I would save that toaster for other projects. You never know.
Love these vids happy subscriber always great work Ron.
This is very good. I'ma bout to tackle a tar potted in open AK F2 speaker field coil that goes with my 46 radio. I have a rarely used toaster oven. This will get it out of it's case. The speaker voice coil was also open, I found a break in a wire splice solder joint in the wire under some tape going from the speaker wire terminal on the way to the voice coil, that's fixed. I hope to get lucky again fixing the field coil. Assuming I do fix it the remaining question is whether I should re-pot with the tar or leave it out. Thank you for your excellent how-to videos!
Paint all the parts with thick coats of lacquer and leave it unpotted! If it goes open again you will be happy!
@@glasslinger Thankyou for the tip!
No wonder I am asleep during the day. Its almost midnight here and youtube notified me about this gem :)
ye me too im in UK and its midnight but theres no way I can go to sleep now with an hour long Glasslinger to enjoy... love this guy
Thanks, I was just watching the 26 video and it got me curious about unpotting one of these.
Beautiful restoration
Great video ! I wonder how many weeks a regular earner's paycheck it took to buy that radio new.
What was the original purpose of all that pine resin, and why didn't you replace it?
Allegedly to "seal out moisture" but also to prevent people from being able to reverse engineer the then-new and recently-patented superheterodyne circuit design. An early example of proprietary electronic design by a corporation.
@@gregorymalchuk272 Ah. Interesting-Cheers.
Another great video, thank you
Awesome! Can’t wait till I’m off work to watch this.
Woops - I think you just voided the warranty when you removed those lead seals ...
Definitely... unless he found a warranty registration card in there to send in to RCA, lol.
It did come out beautiful.
You are the best electrotuber (Electronic TH-camr)
CrazyLabs , If you enjoy this video, try Mr Carlson's Lab, another Patreon channel, but done with a bit more care for details from the era. Be especially careful with Paul's constant reminders about safety in the lab.
Brilliant working 👍
So maple syrup is made in the oven and then filled into a glass, a nice radio and after the restoration it looks like new again. 👍
Wow, really complex circuit! The first tube is a reflex RF/IF amplifier, the second tube is a reflex OSC / Mixer (autodyne mixer), the third tube is the second IF/first AF amp, the 4th tube is a detector, 5th and 6th tubes are AF amplifiers. (I think I got that all right).
Amazing as always, Ron. At the time of manufacture, what was RCA's stated purpose for potting everything in resin, and was it unique to RCA, or was it a common practice in the period?
This was unique to RCA. Atwater Kent potted power supplies and transformers in tar. The RCA catacombs was meant to be a "standard" superhet system that could be mounted in many different radio models. As it turned out, it was way more expensive than other construction methods so it was quickly discontinued.
Wow, you have some of the oldest radios on TH-cam.
Lots of tubes! Too many for a simple TRF, is this an early superhet?
I suspect that the reason your substitute tube doesn't work in the RF,IF and OSC stages is because of the capacitor from the screen to ground.
If you put an RF choke in series with the 47K resistor, I bet that the tube might work in those stages.
Great job i love this heavy radios 👍
Hi there, by coincidence there's an article in the latest Australian Silicon Chip Magazine (August 2019) by Dennis Jackson which describes the restoration of one of these radios. In that set the audio transformers had gone open and one of the RF coils had to be rewound. He also had problems in removing the resin. He also suggests that the catacomb was potted to discourage copying. Cheers Doug.
"the catacomb was potted to discourage copying"
Ah, I was wondering
another interesting repair.
What is the function of the rings with the small balls on the ends (look like they snap in to the large bezels on the front panel)?
Man whoever came up with that catacomb idea just caused a ton of problems. It's not like any decent company wouldn't have been able to dismantle the catacomb and reverse engineer the radio. It just caused tons of servicing issues for 100 years and counting
Quicker, and cheaper to assemble the radio if it all goes in the soup rather than building individual sealed components. I'm sure after hearing enough complaints from the service people is when they changed their mind.
The AR-812 is a historical artifact, no doubt. But serviceability is for the brave if not foolish - history repeats itself.