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The vintage radio
Jul. 11th, 2025 01:01 amThis is a bit of a different type of project for me...
A while ago, I went out to get a kebab, when I noticed this thing that was being discarded near my place:
It looked atypical enough for me to have a closer look... I had never seen vacuum tubes irl before. The thing looked like a radio, but from another age, and in poor condition. I went to grab my kebab, but thought about it...
When I returned, it was gone. I entered my building, and saw it sitting near my neighbor's door. Oh, cool, I thought.
I did have some fascination for that vintage radio. I'm not really into radio stuff, but I find ancient technology like this fascinating, and part of me wanted to see it work, see what it could do, etc... so I texted my neighbor about it.
In the end, he said he didn't have time for it, so I could have it if I wanted... he was going to throw it out, so I decided to take it.
The front of the radio. It's a Philips Ouverture 59, apparently some Austrian model? From 1958-59. The markings are in German. No idea what its story has been and how it ended up here in France. Not sure how far it was actually sold, but it does have a mains voltage selector...
Someone added an audio cable with a 3.5mm jack to it. Seems that they used it to play music. The mod connects to existing connections on the back, which are labelled "schallplatenwiedergabe" (translates to "record playback").
Obviously, this poor thing has been sitting for ages in a basement or something of that sort. It's in pretty bad shape. And dirty.
The back of the radio. It atleast appears to be complete -- the radio is missing some cosmetic elements, but all the electrical stuff is there. All the vacuum tubes are in, but I don't know if they're good. One of them was supposed to be placed behind the front plate, so you could see its glow through a small window, but it was ripped off its socket pretty roughly, and the pins were all bent, so no idea if that tube will work again.
The electrical system, seen from underneath. The wiring is an absolute mess.
Other than that, it doesn't look too bad. There's some rust, and one of the connection support things is broken, but that doesn't seem too problematic... most concerning is that there's a loose wire, and so far, I haven't been able to find where it should go.
The other unknown is whether those 60 year old components are still good. And good luck figuring out problems arising from bad components, short of checking every single one...
The mechanical elements of this system are another story. They're going to need some WD-40, contact cleaner, you name it. Also, most of the tuner cables are broken, so that will need to be fixed too, somehow.
I haven't tried plugging this thing. I'm not going to try until certain things are taken care of (like that loose wire). I'm always afraid, with electrical things, that they will blow up in some way, and I'm even more afraid with something like this.
Although actually, it wouldn't even do anything if I plugged it right now. The mains power is routed through the bottom switch mechanism -- I can see the contacts through which it would go, but haven't found a way to actuate them as to close the circuit. AKA I don't know how to turn this thing on. Or maybe the switch thing is just broken.
-
As I said, I'm not really into radio stuff, but I'm fascinated regardless. I talked about this vintage radio at the local hackerspace, and they're interested in it, too, so the idea is to bring it there and work on it together, and see what we can do. So this isn't going to be a strictly "me" project, but I might post updates about it.
For now, I took the radio apart entirely and cleaned up the parts, because, god, was it filthy.
Now, my idea is to do some basic repairs before we bring it to the hackerspace. For example, the body is largely made of plywood, but it has been delaminating due to moisture. So, through the power of wood glue, I'm attempting to give it some structural integrity.
For example:
The side panels. In this picture, I was done repairing the left panel. The right one is obviously in much better shape, but you can see some delamination going on in the corner. Wood glue and clamps took care of it.
This mostly serves to repair the radio's body so it won't absolutely fall apart. This thing won't look brand new anyway. Not unless we got into professional restoration, applying new veneer, remaking the missing trim pieces, etc...
On one hand, I'm very "function over looks", but on the other hand, it would feel satisfying to pull that off. And I've seen pictures of this radio in pristine condition, and it looks pretty good. But that's another thing...
The next thing will be to do some basic work on the radio system -- repairing the tuner cables, inspecting the circuitry, hopefully fixing that loose wire, ...
So yeah... stay tuned! (heh)
A while ago, I went out to get a kebab, when I noticed this thing that was being discarded near my place:
It looked atypical enough for me to have a closer look... I had never seen vacuum tubes irl before. The thing looked like a radio, but from another age, and in poor condition. I went to grab my kebab, but thought about it...
When I returned, it was gone. I entered my building, and saw it sitting near my neighbor's door. Oh, cool, I thought.
I did have some fascination for that vintage radio. I'm not really into radio stuff, but I find ancient technology like this fascinating, and part of me wanted to see it work, see what it could do, etc... so I texted my neighbor about it.
In the end, he said he didn't have time for it, so I could have it if I wanted... he was going to throw it out, so I decided to take it.
The front of the radio. It's a Philips Ouverture 59, apparently some Austrian model? From 1958-59. The markings are in German. No idea what its story has been and how it ended up here in France. Not sure how far it was actually sold, but it does have a mains voltage selector...
Someone added an audio cable with a 3.5mm jack to it. Seems that they used it to play music. The mod connects to existing connections on the back, which are labelled "schallplatenwiedergabe" (translates to "record playback").
Obviously, this poor thing has been sitting for ages in a basement or something of that sort. It's in pretty bad shape. And dirty.
The back of the radio. It atleast appears to be complete -- the radio is missing some cosmetic elements, but all the electrical stuff is there. All the vacuum tubes are in, but I don't know if they're good. One of them was supposed to be placed behind the front plate, so you could see its glow through a small window, but it was ripped off its socket pretty roughly, and the pins were all bent, so no idea if that tube will work again.
The electrical system, seen from underneath. The wiring is an absolute mess.
Other than that, it doesn't look too bad. There's some rust, and one of the connection support things is broken, but that doesn't seem too problematic... most concerning is that there's a loose wire, and so far, I haven't been able to find where it should go.
The other unknown is whether those 60 year old components are still good. And good luck figuring out problems arising from bad components, short of checking every single one...
The mechanical elements of this system are another story. They're going to need some WD-40, contact cleaner, you name it. Also, most of the tuner cables are broken, so that will need to be fixed too, somehow.
I haven't tried plugging this thing. I'm not going to try until certain things are taken care of (like that loose wire). I'm always afraid, with electrical things, that they will blow up in some way, and I'm even more afraid with something like this.
Although actually, it wouldn't even do anything if I plugged it right now. The mains power is routed through the bottom switch mechanism -- I can see the contacts through which it would go, but haven't found a way to actuate them as to close the circuit. AKA I don't know how to turn this thing on. Or maybe the switch thing is just broken.
-
As I said, I'm not really into radio stuff, but I'm fascinated regardless. I talked about this vintage radio at the local hackerspace, and they're interested in it, too, so the idea is to bring it there and work on it together, and see what we can do. So this isn't going to be a strictly "me" project, but I might post updates about it.
For now, I took the radio apart entirely and cleaned up the parts, because, god, was it filthy.
Now, my idea is to do some basic repairs before we bring it to the hackerspace. For example, the body is largely made of plywood, but it has been delaminating due to moisture. So, through the power of wood glue, I'm attempting to give it some structural integrity.
For example:
The side panels. In this picture, I was done repairing the left panel. The right one is obviously in much better shape, but you can see some delamination going on in the corner. Wood glue and clamps took care of it.
This mostly serves to repair the radio's body so it won't absolutely fall apart. This thing won't look brand new anyway. Not unless we got into professional restoration, applying new veneer, remaking the missing trim pieces, etc...
On one hand, I'm very "function over looks", but on the other hand, it would feel satisfying to pull that off. And I've seen pictures of this radio in pristine condition, and it looks pretty good. But that's another thing...
The next thing will be to do some basic work on the radio system -- repairing the tuner cables, inspecting the circuitry, hopefully fixing that loose wire, ...
So yeah... stay tuned! (heh)
