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Old 23rd Mar 2017, 12:51 am   #1
cosmocat
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Join Date: May 2011
Location: Bristol, UK.
Posts: 34
Default Ferguson 461 surprise

A little while ago I wrote this thread http://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/s...d.php?t=129145 about a birthday present from a friend.

A month or so after I finished the restoration and had put a Facebook post to him about it, we met again with our other halves for dinner. Our conversation turned to the Murphy radio and I told him of the work involved and the fun I had doing it, and that it was now working well. He showed me a photo of another radio he had owned for "about 30 years" that never worked. "Very nice" I said. " Its in the car if you want it" he said and it was too good to pass up!

When I got the radio home it was in a generally good state. The audio output valve was missing, the main smoothing caps had been replaced ( around 1960 by the type of new part) and the mains cable had perished but apart from that complete.

I sourced a new EL33 output valve, 3 core mains lead that's cotton covered and looks like old style flex, and new bulbs for the dial, and set about re-capping the electrolytics and wax caps. After checking around the mains transformer I tried an initial power up on the lamp limiter with no valves.
Dial lamps came on and all transformer voltages looked right, so switch off, fit rectifier, back on, and after a little warm up the HT came up nicely. Fitting the new EL33 and cleaned up EBC33 had the audio amp stage working, then fitting the original ECH35 and EF39 and the chassis was working beautifully.

Then came the case. The varnish was badly crazed and flaking and a couple of scratches meant a simple polish wasn't going to be enough although the veneer looked good. After much agonising I decided to strip it and re-varnish. 4 coats of varnish with a rub down in-between coats with fine abrasive paper, then a final wax polish gave a pleasing result with a good deep shine that set off the wood grain well.

Then the final part. I called his wife and asked if she had just wanted it out of the house, or would he like it back as a birthday present? " Really!? We'd love it ! " she said.

So the plan was set. A final assembly and good soak test showed everything was fine, the controls worked smoothly. With the chassis now earthed I made an adapter cable to connect the GRAM input to a 3.5mm jack plug that worked in the headphone output of an I-pod so you could play music through it as well.

I presented him with the radio at his birthday dinner and he was delighted, and I was happy it had a good home.
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