Searcy Posted March 3, 2016 Share Posted March 3, 2016 So here's another project to play with. I grabbed this off of Ebay a few weeks ago just to play around with. It was listed as a "1940's Tube Radio" so I got it for $45 with no expectations. I'm not an amp expert by any means so I may need your help with this one. Both in getting it working and figuring out who made it and when. When it got here I tried to power it up. No dice. The vintage 6V6 power tubes had erratic glowing then one when out while the other started to burn inside. Then a little smoke leaked out of the case. I shut it down. After some pondering it seemed to be that a good idea would be to buy some new power tubes and a new rectifier tube. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Searcy Posted March 3, 2016 Author Share Posted March 3, 2016 I plan to replace the input and outputs with more standard 1/4" mono jacks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Searcy Posted March 3, 2016 Author Share Posted March 3, 2016 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fromnabulax Posted March 3, 2016 Share Posted March 3, 2016 Good gosh, that's a beautiful heap of 20th century spaghetti you've got there. The good old days of risking electrocution by winding speaker cable with damp hands I fear are far behind us. What a shame... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rct Posted March 3, 2016 Share Posted March 3, 2016 The good old days of risking electrocution by winding speaker cable with damp hands I fear are far behind us. What a shame... And squinting the first three times you stepped to the mic. You knew you were going to get it at least once. rct Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Searcy Posted March 4, 2016 Author Share Posted March 4, 2016 So the new tubes are here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stein Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 So the new tubes are here. So does that mean we can say the previous failure to ignite was a tube failure? That would be good news. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrorod Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 We wait with baded breath....for the answer! My guess? Too good to be true. Those caps have got to be way past their use full life. Pretty cool old amp! What is the rectifier? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stein Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 We wait with baded breath....for the answer! My guess? Too good to be true. Those caps have got to be way past their use full life. Pretty cool old amp! What is the rectifier? I read 5y3 above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badbluesplayer Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 It might be a 1958 Realistic part # 33-303C - 10 watt amp - see page 14 of the catalog HERE It has an early 1957 transformer code and '58 seems to be the only year they made the amp with those tubes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Searcy Posted March 4, 2016 Author Share Posted March 4, 2016 Thanks for the info BBP! I had seem another version of the amp that was from the early 50's so I assumed this one was from the early 60's. 58 sounds about right. So the power switch on this amp in on the back of the Bass pot. It has been very intermittent so I jumped this toggle around it for the time being. I found an mid 60's 8 ohm CTS speaker in the shop and hooked it up just to see if it worked. The switches and pots are dirty and need cleaning. I hooked it up to my Ripper to see what it sounded like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Searcy Posted March 4, 2016 Author Share Posted March 4, 2016 VIDEO http://vid67.photobucket.com/albums/h300/searcystringworks/Realistic%20amp/C2493A91-7DCB-47D8-9106-3C965CE2543F_zps3daj61id.mp4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badbluesplayer Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 It has that 60 cycle hum going. It could be the filaments. Sometimes they used to ground one of the filaments to the chassis and it has to be lifted and/or an "artificial center tap" made with a couple of 100k resistors. I can't tell from the photos if that's the case. The other thing is to make sure the two 6V6's have the same filaments hooked up to the same pins. That looks o.k. I think. Replacing the two prong plug will help by isolating the common from the ground. The cap job should take care of the splatty oscillation stuff. Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fromnabulax Posted March 4, 2016 Share Posted March 4, 2016 I swear Searcy, that video's getting me HOT! Dang! Tubes, wires, glowing and HUM!!! Yeah, BABY!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Searcy Posted March 5, 2016 Author Share Posted March 5, 2016 It has that 60 cycle hum going. It could be the filaments. Sometimes they used to ground one of the filaments to the chassis and it has to be lifted and/or an "artificial center tap" made with a couple of 100k resistors. I can't tell from the photos if that's the case. The other thing is to make sure the two 6V6's have the same filaments hooked up to the same pins. That looks o.k. I think. Replacing the two prong plug will help by isolating the common from the ground. The cap job should take care of the splatty oscillation stuff. Good luck! I'm going to start with installing a 3 prong cord next. After that I'll check out the filament wiring. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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