Arvin 451TL

[AUdubon5425]

Here's an Arvin 451TL that was among some stuff given to me by a nice elderly man who's garage roof had collapsed. This set was wearing a coat of grit and had no tubes or cord, and some rust on the topside of the chassis. After testing the coils and transformer, I gave it a go.

After a lot of cleaning, I totally recapped the set except for one mica capacitor I didn't have a replacement for. I put in a set of tubes and the set played for a half an hour, when the dial light shorted out and smoke appeared.

Turns out, the 35W4 rectifier developed a short and overheated the resistors for the dial light and the filter circuit. After clearing that situation up the set plays very nicely. Eventually I will get a new 5" speaker for her, as it is distorting a little and is very brittle, and the dust cap is gone.

I also need to research the correct way to polish bakelite and do a little more cleaning - but I'm happy to have been able to resurrect this set after 40 years of hibernation.