Yesterdays' Waves

03/06/2026

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1NqWd4GbrT/

02/26/2026

This Heathkit integrated amplifier AA-21D was destined for the scrapheap. After all it's vintage of old germanium transistors with little style and little value. Missing k***s, dirty, broken cover that eventually revealed as not original and wrong size.... there was no appeal to invest any time in it. However...
The value of things change when you put your mind and heart at it. And the more I worked with it, the more I fell in love with it.
I was surprised to find it's rated at 40 watts per channel, powered by four TO-3 Germanium power transistors on each side despite being made around 1964, so it's more than 60 years old!
Before scrapping it, I plugged it in just to witness smoke or any sign of life. It tripped my breaker indicating a bad short-circuit. It had been stored for years outside in a Tempo, temporary canvas shelter. Our winters can reach -40 Celcius. I was to send the electronics to the recycling center and I got triggered by the challenge of diagnosing what was the issue (s). A short-circuit is usually pretty easy to find. Indeed, as I opened the bottom cover, an electrolytic cap was blown. That indicated to me like blown power supply diodes. I was right. So protections should have lifted too. Interestingly, this design has a glass enclosed breaker, but leads had broken off, probably from corrosion or excessive current. I was able to solder them back and happy to see they still conducted. Then I suspected the output transistors as they're usually involved in dead shorts. It was the case, four of them, but on only one channel! I was happy and surprised the other channel had survived.
Those transistors are not available anymore but a direct replacement is NTE121. I was totally amazed to find four new ones in my stash of parts! I changed the diodes for newer better ones, that blown cap and the four transistors. More measurements on the output stage resistors revealed one defective and inflated resistor. I couldn't see that on visual inspection until I removed it. Everything else looked good.
Upon initial tests, I was surprised first, that it worked, and second, that it sounds pretty good!
Cosmetically, the cover was in the worst shape. I tried to save it but when I realized it wasn't original and not even the proper size I decided to make one. But I used some scrap pieces of plywood and cover it to make look ok. I tried Mac-Tac but it's not sticking properly, so I'll make something better eventually. A vent for the heat must also be made. I stole the k***s from another project plus that yellow brown one from a tuner that smoked too much ci******es. Pilot lamps were shot and the plastic bezel didn't hold properly because of broken tabs. When all was taken care of, it looked pretty good!
I'm happy with my decision. That makes for a nice little vintage amp back to life!

02/26/2026

Sometimes I get to fix a battery radio. This Sparton Hiker was a good candidate. Fairly easy to fix, it needed a good cleanup and the usual fix me up parts replacement. I added a small 90/1.5 volts power supply in the battery compartment so it’s a plug-in the wall now. One k**b was missing and put what I had instead, but rubs against the case. Still enjoyable!

02/25/2026

This nice little oval racetrack style radio was in bad shape with many cracks. The case is thinner than usual and many layers on five minutes epoxy and sanding were necessary to fix it.
I wanted to keep it’s original colour scheme so I painted only the outside case without the faceplate.
Getting it back to work was fairly easy, just changing about half a dozen capacitors and only one resistor. An alignment and voilà another nice AA5 working again.

02/20/2026

Very interesting story:

In 1958, Philco Corporation unveiled the Predicta, a revolutionary television with a swivel screen that looked like it came from the future. RCA's president ...

02/14/2026

En cette journée internationale de la radio, notre confrère nous présente une partie de sa collection et sa vision de son histoire

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BrzwYzqoE/?mibextid=wwXIfr

01/22/2026

In 2012 I went to meet a new retiree who was getting rid of a lot of tube stuff. He threw in this piece of junk. I had no plans of doing anything with it. The horrible condition of the case could serve as firewood. He put the electronics on a piece of engineered floor board and used a makeshift power supply with diodes to get it working. The main transformer was shot.
I knew nothing about the radio. Then found out it was a Radiola 60 from 1928-1930, quite popular in the day. It's the first AC powered super heterodyne from RCA, single k**b tuning.
For 2013, my local collectors club was hosting it's annual restauration contest for the 13th time and I needed a project ( sqcra.org/restaurations/2013/ ). I looked at all the spread out parts of this set in my yard and wondered if I could do something with it. So here goes.

01/14/2026

Lets visit an older restoration from 2012, a Philco 3610 console. It was to be part of our local clubs' annual restoration contest where it took third place: https://sqcra.org/restaurations/2012-2/ Interesting that it's on sale on Marketplace by a new owner. So I thought it might be a good idea to reveal part of its past. So here goes in photos.

11/24/2025

Even though if we’re always busy with electronics, sometimes we got to eat. The idea of fetching one of these beautiful and powerful commercial four slice toaster was floating around for quite a while. So I found one cheap, but the amount of filth was staggering. Doing some research on this model by the famous Toastmaster company yielded that it dates from 1934! Quite a surprise and explains the accumulation inside.
SOS pads were a friend for this project that needed a complete disassembly. Amazing the amount of heavy duty parts in that appliance. It could never be made this way today, but they can’t last as long either. Took a few days to clean the individual parts. Fortunately I took lots of pictures of every step of disassembly and details as putting it back together was a challenge. One timer wasn’t working but some brake cleaner got it going again. No lubricant in this equipment, both for heat and food safety reasons.
Once fully reassembled, tests were nerve wracking as if an element was to be damaged, getting another one would prove to be a heck of a challenge. The chrome shows many years of wear but is mostly very bright and shiny. The industrial design is so nice, so much that some museums have examples in their collections.
I’ll be glad to relive the experience of tasting white bread just like when I was very young and ate at some diner for breakfast where it smelled so good.

11/05/2025

This set was done a long long time ago, when cameras had very poor resolution and starting to fix Bakelite cases. This one was really bad. I don't remember if I dropped it or it had been repaired before I got it, but anyhow, it came out really well. The original k***s, I couldn't find though.

11/05/2025

Here are a few photos of some of the items on sale at our local collector's club fall auction.
2025-11-01
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19SzkbD7cH/

10/15/2025

Here's a rarity, a brand new old stock kit radio. From a company I don't personnally know. With five tubes and all the components and instructions to assemble it, only the second time I've seen one.