I really like the Craftsman vice you've got. You did a nice job cleaning it up.

Tom

This vice replaces a cheap Chinese one that I literally broke. It was made out of cast iron and one day just literally broke into pieces when I was trying to straighten out something. The one I fixed is probably from the 40's or 50's and made of cast steel, which is pretty indestructible. I also reinforced the work bench so I can do heavier work.

Amazing what a little carbon will do!

-Steve

Here's an odd one: probably a late 60's, early 70's Panasonic stereo. Features motorized pushbutton tuning. Anyway its pretty "new" so I just cleaned the control pots and replaced a burnt out indicator lamp.

Last week a big pile of German sets came in. Here's the first.

Its a very large Grundig set that has actual built-in stereo. Uses a set of ELL80's, meaning that's a set of push-pull audio per channel. I forgot to take pics of the underside but it was a damned rat's nest in there. Took a full day to get it all done. As with most larger sets I do these days it too has installed bluetooth.

Now on rare occasion I'll work on a set that really makes me scratch my head. This is one of those radios. It is a very large table set marked with the " E. Lebert" brand and other than a stamp of the brand up front and the back there's no other identifying markers. Features a "Vega" brand speaker and US-style octal tubes.


At first I thought the cabinet was some sort of homemade piece but inside are a number of stamps and chalk markings that indicates its factory-made. The wood is fairly rough and of overall poor quality. The chassis itself is made of thin galvanized sheet metal. Its overall sort of a crudely made thing.


The underside shows a set that's as bare-bones basic as one could imagine. The style of the caps inside is very similar to the ones I've seen in both French and a Belgian set I own.




So far I've found basically nothing about this brand anywhere. There's no model Numbers or any other form of identification other than the name. If I were to take an educated guess I'd say this set might be a post-war set made either in Belgium or France. The scarcity of materials immediately after the war meant many manufactured items were made of very cheap materials. I've seen this repeatedly with post war Philips and various other Euro brands where the wood was close to being scrap lumber and the chassis were a hodge-podge of components, interestingly sometimes with American tubes. I assume because perhaps there was a surplus leftover from the US's presence there.

EDIT: I am almost certain its French. Nantes is a city in France.

In any regard its now up and working. Actually it sounds pretty decent for what it is. Its not exactly an attractive set but I think worthy of preservation for the sake of an historically interesting piece.

It certainly is a fascinating radio.
I love that galvanized chassis. Looks like it was made from a furnace duct

-Steve

Its super crude. But its different and I enjoyed working on this more so than radios from well established makes.

I like the rough aesthetic.

Never seen a tin jigger cup used as a half-shield before

How well does this radio perform?

Lebert was a small manufaturer. Here is the address and link to your radio:
https://forum.doctsf.com/t/radio-e-lebert-nantes/3042

Believe it or not the radio works great. Its pretty sensitive. I added an audio input to the record player input as well. It actually has a nice, full-range sound. Jiri, Thanks for the info!

Here is another oddball Euro set. Its a 1951 Imperial brand set with AM, FM, SW, and phono input. Its a domestic market radio with all controls in German. What I do appreciate about this one is that while most german sets I work on are like rat's nests of wiring and components, often in impossible to get at locations this one was built using lots of individual component boards that were actually clearly marked and easy to access. 90% of the capacitors were mounted on these boards and the whole recap job took maybe 1 hour.



What took longer was that the dial string had snapped. If you've ever had to re-string a German radio... I wouldn't wish that on anyone. It took about 2 hours to finally get it all back together.


Anyway... its now up and running and has installed bluetooth as well.

Well done! I didn't realize how big this radio was until I saw the picture of it sitting on the corner of the pickup truck bed.

Tom

Yup. The last 4-5 German sets have all been monster-sized sets. Some really sound more like a console.

Anyway... ANOTHER German set, this time a small NordeMende set. Not much to do on this one: Someone had replaced all of the caps except for the electrolytic which was leaky and causing AC hum. This set uses a PCB board and was very fragile, meaning I had to gently remove the can without cracking it. Cabinet was cleaned and waxed.





Anyway, I have two German sets with problems that need more research. But I'm going to pull back and do a few more basic sets as these german sets are more difficult and take more time. So I'm a little tired of working on them right now

So people give you cool old radios for free and you get to spend your days fixing them?

How do I get a job like that??

Well, I shouldn't complain. This isn't my day job. I do all of these after work for our museum. If anything its addicting. If I don't have a pile of radios to work on then I feel something's wrong. But sometimes doing the same kinds of sets gets repetitive. So I'll pop out a few generic AA5's next as those are cake and don't require looking at teeny drawings on a big schematic...

And now for a shift back to Murcian' radios. This one a late 30's GE. I forgot to take before pics but the finish was pretty bad looking. I really don't have the time or skill to refinish these and this one used a lot of photo finish. My "trick" for dealing with worn out finishes is to start with old english, then apply beexwax, then several application of Meguier's caranuba paste wax. You'd be surprised how well even the worse finishes will clean up.


Not much "under the hood". About an hour and the recappin' job was done.

Actually its a good sounding set. I added an audio input too. The value is probably not exactly high so no bluetooth on this one.

Hi,

What part of this radio is photo finish? I think I've got the same radio (GE F70) and I thought the finish was all-wood veneer.

Tom