The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area The Electrical Bay The Radio Bench Philco Transitone Model 938K

I pulled a Philco Model 938K out of my parts truck. The box itself looks pretty good but the speaker and dial are dead. Is it worth rebuilding and putting back in the truck? Should I take it to an antique store and then upgrade to a modern one?

Pictures of the radio.

https://plus.google.com/101330475871611754923/posts/1UsXiAZvgVM

I find that a radio that was not original equipment from GM is not a very desirable item for resale. Personally I would not rebuild it either but that is up to you.

Take it from a man who has 300 useless boxes from the 20's thru the 50's taking up room
in his basement and garage.......Fred's right on.
The rebuild of one of these old radios to make them actually usable requires re-wiring,
replacing the carbon resistors, replacing the condensers, often times months or years
searching for a new volume control, complete rework of the tuning mechanism of which
there are hundreds of variations. Finding a replacement speaker will be a nightmare.
Then there is the cosmetics, rust removal, paint, plating, dial faces.
In other words......hundreds of hours spent at the bench all for a radio that only recieves
AM talk shows with poor station stability. And when you're all done, you would be hard
pressed to sell it for $30.
Denny G

Just a quick thought, but you could gut the inside, install modern electronics and then freshen up the outside. Then have a more modern radio but keep the original outside look. There are a few on E-bay. They look pretty neat.

That makes sense. Thank you all for the advice. I think it will make a good trophy or trinket.

I rebuild an original radio like mentioned above in this thread, you have to replace nearly all the Rs and Cs yes.
The AM stations up in Canada play a lot of good music, not too much talk radio at all, and i wanted to do it as a challenge mostly.
as for the speaker, even in 1950s, the speakers were already standard sized, you can buy new coils and cones online and tear out all the old stuff, reuse the metal frame and electro magnet and put in all new bits.
i attach some photos for fun.

2many,
that radio is a correct truck radio and is quite valuable. The one in the beginning of this thread is not and really doesn't belong in the truck. However it would be simple to rebuild. Speakers are usually not a problem if the exact size and style aren't important.

I'd be very interested in hearing about your source for vintage 6x9 4Ω speakers as replacements in
the AD radios.
Replacing cones and coils are not as easy as it may seem. I've found getting exact replacement parts for
these old style speakers is near impossible. If you rebuilt that speaker in the linked pictures you need to
offer that service to the public. That is an extremely professional job of rebuilding and I would love to hear
more about how you went about that.
I did stock up on replacement 4Ω speakers when I rebuilt mine and a friends original AD radios.
Electro-Tech Inc. in MN carries a pretty extensive line of vintage style speakers. http://turnswitch.com/
The 4x9 4Ω speaker from them runs about fifty bucks.

Denny G

hi Denny,
i got the re-cone parts from The Speaker Exchange, see: https://reconingspeakers.com
the website didn't list a 4 ohm coil probably because they are not as common as the 8 ohms, but i called them up and it was a part they were easily able to get for me.
for fun i decided to rebuild the paper on a 4 ohm coil that i took out a donor burned speaker. (looked like a mild car fire burned the parts radio a bit).
using some of that tough brown mailing envelop stock and a socket and some glue, worked very well. photo attached

in hind sight i should just have used fresh wire and wound a new coil on totally straight paper, but as long as you have clearance in the magnet everything will be fine.
wrap wax or parchment paper tight on a socket until you have the ID you need, then wrap the coil paper extra wide, tape it, wrap appropriate gauge wire for your desired coil size and impedance (this step takes a bit of math),
glue it, when it is dry cut and trim it all down to size.

it's quite fun and relaxing to rebuild speakers, and you can't mess up so bad that you can't just start all over again.
i did two similar PM (permanent magnet) 6x9 rebuilds before i did the original electroDynamic speaker for my radio, photo attached, GM part number 7255903.
the painters tape is protecting the original inked GM part number on the back of the coil.

some radios from similar time period use many of the same parts, so even if you are restoring a Truck radio, don't pass up cheap Car radios of the similar years.
My radio didn't have it's transformer as someone was trying to convert it to line power for use in a shop,
i found several junk radios for 5-10 bucks each and one (a 49-50 Pontiac radio) had the exact part number transformer for my truck radio! actually a lot of that radio is the same on the inside, many good parts.
-s

I'll book mark that link, thanks. I've been looking for a source for cones for years, never ran across that one.
I've got dozens of small AM radios that need the little 4" speakers reconed, but having a shop do them isn't
worth it since most of those radios are only valued at 25 or 30 bucks.
Thanks for the heads up.
Denny Graham