My wife’s aunt recently asked me to repair an antique radio she was using for decoration in her house. The radio is a Crosley 10-136E, a standard AA5 tube radio which was produced in Cincinnati, OH, in 1950. I plugged her into my variac and slowly brought her back to life but she wouldn’t play any stations.
I changed the necessary capacitors, tested the tubes, found the 50C5 tube was very weak and ordered a replacement. I powered her up again and she slowly came to life, played very loudly and then the sound dropped to a level where you could hardly hear anything. I could tune in stations but couldn’t get any volume. I noticed a 100 ohm resistor was sweaty during operation and after cooling down it would leave a waxy residue. I replaced the resistor but unfortunately that did not solve the problem.
While looking over the unit I noticed the wire connecting the transistor to the speaker prong was a little out of place and when I adjusted, it would impact the sound in the speaker. I removed the wires and soldered them back properly ensuring they remained separate and not touch which is what brought the volume control back. The two wires were touching and shorting out the speaker. Problem solved!
The case itself has a couple of cracks which I glued back together on the inside of the unit and they are not nearly as noticeable now.
Last year I repaired my first radio which took over two months and I recently had to walk away from my second attempt on a Philco radio that is still inoperable. I started this Crosley repair on Dec 19th and finished on January 28th so I’m getting faster at the repairs.
Below are videos I took of the repair progress. On to the next one!
Aaron Hartley 