Salvaged console tube reciever

[CivicProtection]

Hi folks, I was at a thrift store last week and I saw this big abused wooden floor model console sitting there. It was a tube stereo with an FM/AM tuner and a record player.
It had a hinged lid on the top so when you open it and look down you can see the turntable, tuning dial and controlls.

Everything inside looked clean and well taken care of, even had all the little booklets and manuals, including the all important schematic diagram.

Yesturday I went back and it was still there. The outside of the console was ......dinged, scratched and dented.....basically chronically mistreated. Along with the scratches, there with a $9.99 price tag.

I peered inside the back and I saw two bigish bass speakers and two tweeters, with a large long steel chassis hanging vertical.

It worked beautifully when I plugged it. I know, I know!!! It is not kosher to just go "gung ho" and plug the mother in, but I didn't see any melted this or burned out that, so I crossed my fingers and plugged it in. Worked perfect......as I can tell.

I didn't want the heavy awkward not very special wooden cabinet so I asked if I can buy it and leave the wooden housing behind. They said sure. So I borrowed some tools from them and proceeded to spend the next hour in the store pulling the receiver chassis out, speakers, turntable and all the wiring. Even the FM antenna!

Please forgive me people........I know that it was really nice and worh alot of money as a whole, but the reason why I canabalised the unit is because I couldn't take the console part with me, and I knew that in another day or so if it wasn't sold, the whole thing would be uncerimoniously heaved *with a crash and smash* into the huge dumpster behind the thrift store.

I carefully lugged it all home and laid it all out on my kitchen table. Plugged it all in and it still sounds sweet.

I then took the tubes out, washed them with paper towel and 409 type stuff,
used a cloth and the same cleaner and scrubbed the dirty chassis. Everything had this yellow dust residue on it. It all looks clean and bright. I remembered where the tubes went to it all works nice still. The pots are all filthy and scratchy, needs contact cleaner/lube spray.

The chassis is not "Live" ( I tested this with a multimeter later on) so I could leave the top open and show off the tube goodness? Or should I enclose it all? I don't know anything about doing this, I spoke with a fellow in a vintage record game audio store before I saw the thing at the trift store and he didn't have tube audio equipment, but he knew that guys sometimes bought the big consoles and put the receiver etc into a little box.

Interestingly, there are ready to go input output RCA female jacks on the chassis! I plugged my mp3 player in and it sounded real good. It is "good to go".

I will scan the schematic diagram and post it soon, but for now I will tell you what I know:

it is from Nov 1964. It is a Canadian made Electrohome.
It has 8 tubes in it. and one large transformer with two little ones.

The tubes it uses are:

-6GW8 <<<<<two of these
-6C4
-6BL8
-6BE6
-6AL5
-6AU6A
-6BA6

The chassis is 10x12x6"

It has a tuning dial, a piece of glass with a light under it.
The tuning dial makes it 6" tall.

I just need a little help from you guys/gals

My goal here is to make a simple wooden housing and mount it all inside like a normal unit. I will hook it up to nice floor model speakers as apposed to the feeble ones it came with. Nice compact unit I can set aside. I have a cat so I want her protected from the hot tubes and vise versa.

Like a newbie.....a mistaken newbie; I tried to wash this yellow scum off the glass and wiped off most of the markings. I am upset at myself for that, but I will flatbed scan the damaged dial and make a new one by printing out the makings on a transparency. The dial and the whole thing were designed to be looked down on as you opened the console's lid. Being mounted horizontal and on its side the dial makings are on their side too. I will turn lemons into lemonade and when I make the new dial I will rotate all the numbers 90 degrees so I can read them and maybe add some cool Fallout 3 Vault tech graphics to this, or that other company in the game......Radiation King?

[planet10]

Pictures?

What you have is a single ended ECL86/6GW8 amplifier. Can be quite nice. Over time you can replace caps, some Rs and get it sounding better. The rectifiers (no rectifier tube, so assume SS) will need changing if they are selenium, and if a half-wave rectifier you'll want to put in a full bridge (UF4007 x 2 or 4).

I usually don't bother with the tuners in these, but the transformers aren't all that bad.

Don't fret over leaving the cabinet behind. I've burned many of these... probably over 100 if the number of used ECC85s i have is any indication.

dave

[Eli Duttman]

The tube complement is unimpressive and suggests a bottom of the line product, sorry. Sight unseen, the TT is a record destroyer.

That unit is LOW power single ended (SE). VERY efficient speakers are in order.

By all means, scan the schematics and upload them. The "crowd" will help you squeeze every last drop out.

[planet10]

Originally Posted by Eli Duttman

That unit is LOW power single ended (SE)

Probably on the order of 3-4 watts.

dave

[Eli Duttman]

Dave,

Sadly, the tuner is guano, but it may be possible to use the power trafo's comparative heft to advantage. 6GW8s are scarce. Perhaps reconfiguring the amp/PSU section to use a 12AX7 and 2X 6BQ5s would be appropriate.

[CivicProtection]

I'll take a pic of the top of the chassis, the underside and scan the schematic diagram. I will have it out to you soon. For now I will read some stuff from booklet that came with it.

Phonola AM/FM Stereo console:

audio power 10 watts peak music power.
Dual silicon rectifiers

in the booklet, there are specs for two models:
a "Multiplex" model and a "Non-Multiplex" model.

The Non-Multiplex has only 8 tubes while the Multiplex has 10.

What I got is NOT low end junk, but it was only $10 too. I can't complain.

I figure I can use it with some nice speakers or headphones. The speakers that came with it were lackluster.

[planet10]

Originally Posted by Eli Duttman

Sadly, the tuner is guano, but it may be possible to use the power trafo's comparative heft to advantage. 6GW8s are scarce. Perhaps reconfiguring the amp/PSU section to use a 12AX7 and 2X 6BQ5s would be appropriate.

People keep saying that about ECL86, i've got at least 20 of them (likely at least a pr of them from the same amp). Good chanve the ones here are Philips (Civic, do they have a set of 3 symbol codes near the base of the tube?)

If i was going to rebuild with EL84/6BQ5 i'd do an RH84 (ECC81+EL84)

Post pics of the speakers too. You may have gotten lucky.

dave

[CivicProtection]

Originally Posted by planet10

People keep saying that about ECL86, i've got at least 20 of them (likely at least a pr of them from the same amp). Good chanve the ones here are Philips (Civic, do they have a set of 3 symbol codes near the base of the tube?)

If i was going to rebuild with EL84/6BQ5 i'd do an RH84 (ECC81+EL84)

Post pics of the speakers too. You may have gotten lucky.

dave

Good idea, I knew that I prolly wouldn't be using the stock speakers with the reciever, but all I had to do was remove some screws from inside the console and the speakers came out attached to the board with the grill cloth on it, nice and neat. So off I went with a box crammed with goodies.

Friendly people stopped and looked in my box and cheerfully asked me what I was building.

About the tuner; it sounds fine, it picks up FM band reallly well. The sound is chrisp and clear.
Surprising since I simply draped the diapole FM antenna on my kitchen table! Lol.

[kevinkr]

My first DIY system (when 16yrs old) was based on some very similar components salvaged from a Magnavox console. The tuner was not bad sounding at all, had acceptable RF performance for the location, and was stereo (once I figured out how to realign the mpx decoder). The amplifier was SE with a pair of 6BQ5 and a single 12AX7A. The power supply on the amp was fried so I electrically separated the two units, built a separate supply for the tuner/pre, and replaced the power transformer in the amplifier. These units were probably the very thing that got me hooked on tubes - unfortunately replaced within a couple of years with all solid state stuff, I spent decades trying to recapture that elusive sound and ultimately ended right back with SE amplifiers. Now quite a bit fancier of course.

The woofers in a proper open back cabinet are probably ok, might even have alnico magnets, the tweeters probably aren't so hot - in any event the rudimentary cross-over used would certainly need a new cap at this point. An inexpensive pair of no name bullet (annular ring horn) tweeters from eBay should have sufficient efficiency and would probably represent a large improvement - worth playing with IMO..

[CivicProtection]

I notice that when I power it on, the 6AL5 glows white for a split second, then dims down the the normal low orange glow.

Ummmm OK?