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Old 9th Dec 2019, 1:12 pm   #1
JoshWard
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Near Stowmarket, Suffolk, UK.
Posts: 1,962
Default 1930s Iberic Chantilly

Hi all,

It’s been quite a long time since I last posted a success story! I rather foolishly sold off about three quarters of my collection earlier this year which I am seriously regretting now that we have hit winter and I am in need of some projects! Still I can now have the fun of buying back examples of what I miss for twice the price I sold my ones for… such is life!

Anyway, I did keep a couple of projects back, of which this set was one. I picked it up from a car boot sale back in 2013. I think I parted with about £20 for it. I couldn’t resist the Art Deco styling and even with the grand clearout there was no way I could ever part with it. I know next to nothing about Iberic. This is the first French radio I have owned. I did stumble across this site which lists a few models including a bizarre set which appears to be two radios in one! https://www.doctsf.com/grandlivre/preselection.php

Not a lot happened to it in the intervening years. I replaced all the dodgy looking capacitors and powered it up but it was dead with no HT. I remember checking and there was nothing coming out of the mains transformer secondary. I popped it back on the shelf with a note reminding myself to get the transformer rewound!

Anyway, I have recently had a shift around in my living room and a vacant radio sized slot appeared beside my television on top of my Decca radiogram. I tried a few sets there including an Ekco U29 (too small), a 1930s Philips (too portrait in appearance) and a Bush VHF94 (too big!). I then realised that the poorly Iberic sitting in the workshop would be the ideal size and being such an attractive set deserved to be in full view of the sofa.

I hauled it down off the shelf and plugged it in. To my surprise it lit up and I was rewarded with stations coming in nicely. My joy was short lived as I then noticed the mains transformer was getting very hot to the touch. Interesting that a completely dead transformer could come back to life! I knew if it I put it back on the shelf it would be there for another six years so I got in touch with Ed Dinning who rewound the transformer for me. Rather interestingly he said that the insultation between the windings was just plain unwaxed paper. It’s easy to imagine that after being subject to just one damp Dijon day that the insulation would begin to break down. Fortunately, Ed succeeded where Iberic had failed and came up with one rebuilt transformer. After a bit of head scratching it was installed and the set was once again back up and running.

There were a couple of other teething issues to sort. There was a fair bit of hum which was unsurprising as the HT smoother was still the original. This was replaced. There was also a lot of instability. When my hand went near a bizarre metal cased valve this instability settled down. Wiggling it also produced the same results. A look at the example pictured on the Radiomuseum website showed this valve was meant to be in a screening can. Alas with no spares to hand the chosen solution (being a metal canned valve) was to wrap some wire tightly around it and connect the other end to chassis. Problem solved!

The tuning drive cord had snapped and I had no idea of the routing or the length of the cord required so with a bit of trial and error that was replaced. The mechanism was stiff and squeaky so some lubrication resolved that. The crackly volume control (which has been changed at some stage) and the wave change switch both operated nicely following a careful dose of contact cleaner. After fitting a couple of new dial bulbs and giving it a quick clean up the chassis was complete.

Fortunately, the cabinet was in fairly sound condition. The top batten at the rear had come away from the top panel at one end so that was reglued with PVA and left to dry overnight. The cabinet was then cleaned up with T-Cut to remove years of grime. This was followed by a coat of beeswax. The metal trim was very tarnished but a gentle application of cotton wool soaked in T-Cut resolved that. Sadly, some of the copper plate on the speaker decoration had been worn through sometime in the past but it’s not too noticeable. The copper plated feet also came up beautifully!

The original knobs and the back pane were missing when I bought it. I found a matching set of three knobs which I believe are the small type used on various post-War Cossors (501 etc). They don’t appear to be out of place. I popped to B&Q and picked up a small sheet of hardboard and made a new back panel for it. I hate working with hardboard but with plenty of sanding and some very careful drilling the end result wasn’t too horrendous.

So after six years it is finally back together. It performs reasonably well although there’s nothing special to be said about it. It pulls in plenty of stations with a few feet of wire dangling out the back. Annoyingly AM reception is tricky in the corner of the room where it now lives as there’s quite a bit of interference but luckily my AM transmitter overpowers that. I always find pre-War sets sound at their best playing music from the time. Maybe that’s one positive to selling off my collection which was mostly late 1950s sets as I do fancy adding a couple more pre-War sets to the fleet…
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