Philips Philetta
 

Hello,
This Christmas Eve drove my mother-in-law's 1962 Philips Philetta "kitchen radio" to me for service. "It is as always was: It may do it for a while, then it will shut up suddenly, and the other day it will do it all day long or not. Must be a minor fault, please have a look at it! It think it is becoming worse by the time"
It is the E-series valve type version (ECC85, ECH 81, EABC 80, EL 95), so indeed rather straightforward design. Well, about 20 years ago I did a recap and put new valves in. Today I found sticky pots and defective scale illumination bulbs. Nothing else? A close look behind the dial: The Dutch Philips crew did not solder the + and - terminals of the selenium rectifier! Just the wires put through and bent! And this way the set has been in operation ever since!

Soldering the terminals correctly did help: Now it does not shut up any more.

Regards, joe

Re: Philips Philetta
 

Well done Joe it's nice to find a definite cure, when the fault is intermittent love these little radios. Mick.

Re: Philips Philetta
 

Yes, well done, intermittent faults were the Bain of my life for the 50 years I was in the trade. It quite amazing though how long sets will go on working with them, often its until the wire or tag oxidises and creates a high resistance.

Peter

Re: Philips Philetta
 

Yes those little radios are nice but sometimes too many components crammed inside.

Though the Philetta models are still no hassle to fix, there are much worse sets around. The mains transformers tended to go open circuit in many cases as I remember.

Regards, Joe

Re: Philips Philetta
 

Which brings us to the question that you can never answer. "How do you know that you have fixed an intermittant fault?"

Yes, I found a fault that would display all of the symptoms of the defect. Yes, but how do you know that there isn't another defect with a longer MTBF?...
...and so on ad infinitum.:devil:

Re: Philips Philetta
 

Ah time will tell. ;D Mick.

Re: Philips Philetta
 

The Philetta models are really nice radios, but for some reason Philips GB never made their own version or imported the German ones, so they were very rare sets in the UK. Some were bought by British military personnel stationed in Germany in the 1950s and 60s. They were allowed to buy them without paying German or British taxes.

Re: Philips Philetta
 

Ive got Philips Philetta sat in my workshop on a shelf waiting for me to be brave enough to attempt looking at it .
As you say its pretty rammed inside which puts me off a bit, ive never even switched it on although its been there for quite a while now.

Re: Philips Philetta
 

Nice to find that long-established ‘fault waiting to happen’ and it’s very satisfying when you can track it down. I once traced a dry joint in a valve tester that had been present since it was built in 1946, but as it only showed up when testing one specific type of valve it’s perhaps unsurprising that no-one had found it before!