Philco 38-4 questions

[darklife]

Working on this radio for a friend who's Dad passed. The goal is to "just make it play again" so making the chassis look new and making all the parts look 100% original is not exactly necessary.

Cleaning it up enough so I could even work on it was a real job in itself...


And after..


I did the obvious and recapped the power supply section with modern components.
Re-stuffed the caps that I could. One was impossible to get the tar out of no matter how much heat was applied so I just skipped it for now and put the replacement capacitors under it for the time being. Yeah I know the ugly black thing aka capacitor bank lol..


Finally got the front back on and the glass cleaned..


Now the questions

First of all it plays... IT PLAYS!
I was absolutely amazed that this thing is picking up stations and works as good as it does considering this is my first antique restoration.

One problem though... the speaker makes an occasional popping scratchy sound even when volume is all the way down and/or the RF tubes are removed.
This seems to be occurring only in the 6F6 amp stages or the power supply. Could it be a noisy resistor?
To make matters stranger depending on the pair of 6F6 tubes I use makes a difference in how noisy it gets. My tubes are good BTW.

When I crank the volume 2/3 of the way on a loud station the radio suddenly distorts badly. Almost sounds like it is breaking out in oscillation or something. I know it is not the speaker.
What could cause that?

Finally.. the radio requires a good antenna to pick up stations. My outdoor 120' wire makes it pick up all the AM stations my other radios can and it picks up some basic shortwave but it seems lacking in the reception department.
I calibrated and peaked everything so either it is just not a sensitive radio or it is a weak RF tube? I do not think I have replacement tubes to check this, will have to check later.

Thanks for the help.

Like I said the goal here is to just make the radio play. They do not care how authentic it looks under the chassis obviously. Heck they will probably never even look at the back of the radio after I set it up for them.

One last question: How much do you think I should ask for payment for this kind of work? I was thinking $5 for each replacement tube. It came with 3 bad tubes. Maybe 20 bucks plus cost of parts?