Firstly, I checked John Okolowicz' grille cloth. His pattern #8 is the exact one.
Secondably, the pictures by Y2K Bruce are exactly right. The finish on his is correct, and perfect. It even shows the original grille cloth, faded, as it always is. The grille cloth is cemented over a thick cardboard piece that fits into the slight recess in the top of the cabinet, as in bruce's pix, and ends up just flush with the top.
Speaker pointing up bad? Of course, but it was the only way they could have it on this cabinet, and the grille cloth served as a dush filter, anyway. Just remember, they didn't expect it to be around for 80 years, so don't get upset over it!
You might even look for a decent Radiola 80 or 82, with a good speaker. All they did here was to remove the speaker from the regular piower amp, and mount it with a block of wood in the cabinet here. The big difference between the Radiola 80 and 82, was that the 82 had the phono input terminals on the receiver chassis, and the two terminal board on the power amp for the recording in the Radiola 86, where this chassis was also used. Those terminal boards are on the WR-8.
It's sort of neat, the way they mounted the 80 and the 45's to get away from filament sag. they simply ran wires from the sockets in the power amp, with wiring, to a block of wood with other sockets for the tubes. Looks home made, but it's factory done!
The nearest paint match for the power amp and speaker is Rust-Oleum "Leather Brown".
Thanks again for all the great info. I'll use Y2K Bruce's pictures as a reference for refinishing.
I pulled the masonite - it was held on by a few brads. #8 is a great match to the old fragments that remain.
Ah-ha, filament sag. I was wondering why those tubes were mounted like that.
Does anyone have the schematic or know where I can get one? Nostalgia Air doesn't seem to have it.
I've pulled the clock but am not sure what voltage it runs on. The two wires leading to it run behind the chassis and I can't trace them without pulling it. That looks like a major chore.
Last edited by bandersen on Dec Mon 14, 2009 6:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
One of these is on craigslist and is being discussed on this thread. The seller mentions that this one doesn't have a cover over the clock.
The clock runs on the AC line. The wiring for it probably connects to the fuse block in the amplifier.
Awhile back,someone had some new dial scales printed up for the clock on buff paper.I bought one, and was going to use it, but I want the original matte silver finish, THEN, silk screened numerals on that. I scanned the replacement scale, and have it on my hard drive, but I'll need to dig it out, if needs be.
If you don't have a service bulletin from RCA for Radiola 82, I might have one.
The little slot in the clock dial face is a timer of some sort. I did read what it was for, but never could figure out how it signalled when the time was over.
Since GE, Westinghouse, and RCA are so related, I would have expected the clock movement to be Telechron, but it ain't. I don't know who built it.
I cleaned up the face a bit with some tarnx. If I can get a little more of that tarnish off, I'll be happy.
I'll try powering up the clock shortly.
I sounds like the clock mechanism maybe similar to a dash clock for a car where the electricity was used to wind a spring and the spring was what powered the clock. As the spring wound down a pair of points came together and energized a solenoid which would rewind the spring. If the clock has an escapement then this would make sense, I guess that 1 rpm motors had not yet arrived in 1931.
I thought it was something like that too Arran, but it turns out it does use an AC motor that directly drives some gears. One of them trips a cam every second and makes a sound sort of like a pendulum clock.
Nope, Chicago. That set is in a lot better shape than the one I have.
OH BOY! Another radio I'd like to have!!! I think it's really a very tall sky scraper radio!
I think I can salvage it though.
I'm hoping that the missing piece of cone paper may still be inside the radio somewhere or even in my car. I'll do some hunting.
Do you think I should put a little leather conditioner on that leather surround? It's fairly dried out and stiff.
I recorded a little YouTube video of the clock and damaged speaker in more detail.
You may need to try a vacuum cleaner, preferably one that you can turn down to low, to get the dust out from between the voice coil and pole piece. At least they had a metal shield over top to keep dust from falling in directly, even so it's a lousy position to mount a speaker for that reason alone. Almost every radio that I have owned with a speaker mounted that way had speaker problems, not only from the dust but from the heat.
With regards to the surround or hinge, I suppose a leather conditioner might help there, just make sure it isn't silicone based. If it's really bad you could buy some chamois material and make a replacement. One good think about that speaker is that you can unbolt the metal ring on the outside, unscrew the spider, and completely remove the cone, I have a 1932 GE that used the same speaker and I did that to repaint the basket. There is some place where you could get a replacement cone, but those have foam hinges/surrounds, but it would be easy to cut the foam one off and use a chamois one in it's place.
Its an 801 saved from a burning pile.
That is a nice find! Thanks to you and the others who posted photos, as most of us may never see one of them in person.
If interested, you can see a couple of quick snaps of my R-15 project (missing radio) in tis thread.
It's a mechanism to detect and measure the duration of power outages! If the power was out long enough for the timer to expire, the clock won't startup when power is applied.
I suppose it's up to the owner to notice that the lights have come back on, but the clock isn't running and they'll need to reset the slider and adjust the clock.
Also, it should have a second hand, but mine is busted off.
I used brown coffee filter paper and Aleene's Original Tacky glue.
Here's it is all torn up.
I used some painters tape to hold it together while the patches set up.
Down to just that big hole to fill.
I decide to try making a preformed patch by using a plastic sheet over a good portion of speaker cone.
Then, I cut a suitable piece of coffee filter and soaked it in diluted glue.
It work out fairly well. I was definitely able to capture the curvature, but the ridges aren't very distinct.
Even so, I think it's a promising technique.
Here's the patch in place.
Next, some black acrylic paint. The patch wrinkled a little during the gluing and painting, but I happy with it.
Finally, I cleaned up that big wooden plug and screwed it back in.