Just acquired a 1939 Motorola Model 82A Radio

[vortalexfan]

Hello everyone, today I picked up for free locally from someone on facebook marketplace a 1939 Motorola Model 82A AM/SW Radio with built-in clock/timer controlled motorized tuning that is all original except for a couple of weird hacked in modifications that were put in by the one of the previous owners of the set, one of the modifications was that they hacked in a toggle switch in the back of the radio cabinet presumably to take the place of the original push-button power switch mounted on the front panel of the radio, and then the other modification which is kind of a weird modification is that someone at some point in time attempted to hack into the radio two extra speakers besides the original 12" Full-Range Speaker, but it looks like they were never able to actually get the speakers wired into the radio though because they wired some speaker wires to the hacked in drivers but never had them actually attached to anything by the looks of it, and also when they hacked in these additional drivers they butchered up the original speaker soundboard but somehow managed to keep the original grille cloth intact? Not sure how that works...

Anyways I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this particular model of radio and if so how hard or easy is it to restore electrically? I looked at the Rider's Manual for this radio and it looks pretty straight forward except the clock/timer/motorized tuning part which will be kind of interesting to work on.

Also How rare is this radio? I haven't seen too many examples of this model radio out there when doing a general Google search for this model, and what examples I did see were not in very good shape and or the bakelite bezels were either missing or damaged (mine has both bakelite bezels intact yet but the one for the clock is missing the glass insert.)

Any info on this radio would be appreciated, pictures are coming but I need to clean up the cabinet first as its quite dirty and filthy (and full of cobwebs that need swept out.)

[vortalexfan]

Here's a picture of my newly acquired Motorola Model 82A Radio.

[PommeRadio]

Nice looking console. Would be a great performer with those push-pulls 41 driving a 12 inch speaker. PLENTY OF VOLUME! Remove the hacked speakers, check speaker field coil and output transformer and move forward.

[PommeRadio]

You shouldn’t have any problem finding the convex corner for the clock. Plenty of of suppliers.

[vortalexfan]

OK Great, I'm definitely looking forward to trying to get this radio going and adding it to my collection, the clock/timer/station preset dial is definitely a very interesting contraption its almost like a very early version of the DVR that we have now.

Nice part is that I won't really have anything into the set except parts and labor since I got the radio for free.

[Electronic M]

Sometimes people who wanted the effect of a working vintage radio but didn't know how to actually fix it would add a speaker in it and or wire the original into a stereo to fake it....I can remember being 5-9 years old and doing that (granted I didn't hack up the radios I did that with...I knew better even back then).

[vortalexfan]

One of the speakers that was used for the hacked in speakers looks almost like an old guitar amp speaker and the other speaker looks like its a period correct speaker that was removed from a 1930s or 1940s tabletop tube radio that used an old 3.5" or 4" square full-range speaker.

[vortalexfan]

OK So a little update on this radio: While the cabinet looks like crap and the tenite bezels are warped they are not broken, which is a good thing and kind of surprising, but the real stunner is Chassis on this radio; it is almost spotless (not one spot of rust to be found on this chassis except for a little spot of surface rust near the power transformer) which is extremely rare for a radio this old to have a nearly spotless chassis like this, I would rate the condition of this chassis to be even better than my Stewart-Warner Tombstone Radio Chassis which was in really good shape for its age (1934.)

Also this radio has a B+ fuse in the form of a No. 55 Pilot Light in the back of the chassis which is currently broken and I need to find a way to get the old bulb out (which if the person who owned this set before the people who I got this set from wasn't aware of the B+ Fuse on this radio and the bulb was broken when he had it and was trying to get it going but was unable to, that B+ fuse being broken may have been why he couldn't get the radio going.)

Also the undercarriage of this radio I was afraid of what I was going to find under the chassis of this radio because of what the person who I got this radio from had told me about the fact that the previous owner of the set before she got it had attempted to get the radio going but was unable to, and because of all of the modifications done with the speakers I was afraid the undercarriage was going to be a rats nest of bad wiring and hacked in capacitor replacements but to my shock and awe the undercarriage looked factory fresh yet (nearly all original capacitors intact yet with one replacement capacitor that was surprisingly enough replaced rather professionally (it wasn't j-hooked or anything like that, it was actually replaced by fully removing the original capacitor and wiring in the replacement capacitor in its place using factory looking replacement techniques; if it werent for the fact that the capacitor was clearly a replacement from the 1950s I would of sworn it was a capacitor from the factory, the repair was that good of quality.)

Also there was a later hacked in phono input on the back of the radio that at first I didn't know what it was until I removed the chassis from the cabinet and it was "hacked in" at the same point where the factory "TV Input" was wired in at; and the interesting thing is that the phono input was actually done fairly professionally (everything was shielded properly and grounded as it should be, and guessing by the fact that it had a 1950s looking capacitor in this mod, it must of been done in the 1950s, so a fairly old modification.)

The radio seems to be missing a "cable" going from the pilot lite assembly of the clock dial to the back of the radio chassis because there's a pilot light bulb assembly built into the back of the chassis that is marked on the back of the cabinet on the tube layout chart as being the clock pilot light wiring harness socket but then there's no wiring harness coming from the clock assembly for the pilot lights.

Another interesting thing is that on top of the radio chassis right behind the tuner dial assembly there's a lone upright facing light socket that has installed in the socket a No. 55 Pilot Lamp which at first I thought it might of been a spare B+ Fuse because it was the same exact bulb that the radio uses for the B+ fuse and that perhaps it was just a dummy socket that was being used to hold the spare fuse in, but then when I looked underneath the chassis there was actual wires going up to that socket that were tied to one of the tube sockets underneath, so then I figured that if it actually had live wires going to it then more than likely it must of been serving an actual purpose in the radio other than just a "dummy socket", the weird thing is that its not marked on the tube location chart on the back of the cabinet...

Also I figured out that the hacked in "power switch" on the back of the radio cabinet wasn't actually a power switch, but it was wired into the speaker cable and possibly has something to do with the hacked in speakers that were installed in the cabinet, and maybe the switch was wired in such a manner as to "switch off" the fieldcoil assembly from the original speaker so that they could utilize the hacked in Permanent magnet speakers so that they could have a more "Hi-Fi" sound for the phono input that was hacked in, possibly at the same time as the speaker hack. So Interestingly enough, the smaller speaker was just a generic 4" PM speaker from the 1950s (that may have been pulled from a 1950s AA5/AA6 tabletop radio) but the bigger PM Speaker was actually an EV Wolverine Speaker from the 1950s...

Some nude shots of the radio chassis attached for viewing pleasure.

[vortalexfan]

The rest of the Chassis Pix.

[vortalexfan]

I was able to get the chassis powered up on a variac and one of the two rectifier tubes was arcing (but wasn't red-plating), and I had to rewire the speaker because whoever owned this radio before me attempted to try and make this into a "Hi-Fi" radio by adding a papercone tweeter, and an E-V Wolverine Full Range Speaker to the radio in addition to the original speaker and wired a toggle switch inline with the original speaker plug that bypassed the bucking coil in the original speaker and allowed the other speeakers (which were permanent Magnet Speakers) to work with the radio when it was being used with the phono stage that was added to the radio (that was wired in with the radio's TV connection.)

And I am trying to see if I can get a capacitor list around and one capacitor I have a question about is the motor run capacitor that was used to get the motor for the tuner section to work, its a 70 MF 24 VAC capacitor that's in a cardboard tube but I'm not sure where I would locate a capacitor like that anymore, most of the motor run capacitors made nowadays are rectangular shaped.

[DavGoodlin]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Sometimes people who wanted the effect of a working vintage radio but didn't know how to actually fix it would add a speaker in it and or wire the original into a stereo to fake it....I can remember being 5-9 years old and doing that (granted I didn't hack up the radios I did that with...I knew better even back then).

You were into this EARLY, Tom! At 11, I blew the tiny IC amp in a GE "swinger" portable doing this, wrote to GE in Utica and they sent me a whole new amp PCB for like 15 bucks. Later doing same to my GE C4315 clock radio, I was getting spectacular low-power results.

[DavGoodlin]

Originally Posted by vortalexfan

I was able to get the chassis powered up on a variac and one of the two rectifier tubes was arcing (but wasn't red-plating), and I had to rewire the speaker because whoever owned this radio before me attempted to try and make this into a "Hi-Fi" radio by adding a papercone tweeter, and an E-V Wolverine Full Range Speaker to the radio in addition to the original speaker and wired a toggle switch inline with the original speaker plug that bypassed the bucking coil in the original speaker and allowed the other speeakers (which were permanent Magnet Speakers) to work with the radio when it was being used with the phono stage that was added to the radio (that was wired in with the radio's TV connection.)

And I am trying to see if I can get a capacitor list around and one capacitor I have a question about is the motor run capacitor that was used to get the motor for the tuner section to work, its a 70 MF 24 VAC capacitor that's in a cardboard tube but I'm not sure where I would locate a capacitor like that anymore, most of the motor run capacitors made nowadays are rectangular shaped.

That type of cap was used in Alliance Tenna rotor control boxes, that may work. I have an older Motorola model 12Y, similar tuning drive. It worked well long ago when I got it, the tuning motor/presets always worked, never recapped but not restored either.

Good luck, that is a beast with the PP 41's and dual rectifiers, it will sound incredible. I love seeing a console Motorola of this vintage as they seem to be pretty rare.

Caution: rubber parts in the tuning drive system (to keep it quiet) may be worn out, mine was slipping last I tried it.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by DavGoodlin

You were into this EARLY, Tom! At 11, I blew the tiny IC amp in a GE "swinger" portable doing this, wrote to GE in Utica and they sent me a whole new amp PCB for like 15 bucks. Later doing same to my GE C4315 clock radio, I was getting spectacular low-power results.

Much more than that. Not long after I could walk I removed the screws from the back door hardware(dad was bewildered when I handed him a bunch of screws), then I promptly started dismantling everything I could to understand how it worked. I think I was around 4 when the folks first took me to the family cabin where grandpas Danish Modern tube Zenith K731 was still in service...I couldn't have it (according to Grandma), but ma collects depression glass and we were always antiquing on trips so I started buying radios. Eventually I wanted working ones bad enough that I became acquainted with a shop that gave me enough help to start me recapping.... Shortly after we moved across the country and I was self taught from there. It was probably 4-5 years from recapping radios to starting to try to get into TV...And it was about another 4 years after that until we had something that would pass for internet.