Thread: Philips 151U
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Old 17th Oct 2018, 9:36 pm   #1
sexton_mallard
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Join Date: Sep 2013
Location: Ellesmere, Shropshire, UK & Co. Cork, Ireland.
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Default Philips 151U

This little radio arguably was the very first valve radio I came across back in the early 1990's when it appeared at my nan's house, donated I think, by a well meaning neighbour. I remember the pffft! as the across-the-mains cap blew up

Many many years later to a few weeks ago, it sat on the top of a large bookcase as an ornament at my parent's house. Time to reactivate! Following a strip down, the case and chassis cleaned up well. Following the usual gentle power-up on bulb limiters, the radio ran well on its original bitumen coated caps, the speaker buzzed and rattled a little. A full recap was done of all black caps, the mains smoother 50-50 mfd electrolytic was fine and ran cool after a period of being slightly warm as it (I assume) reformed.

Removing the speaker dust cap, vacuuming out the voicecoil and magnetic gap as best I could, the rattle was fixed after re gluing the voicecoil leads back down on the face of the cone. I thought I was using another glue but I used PVC pipe jointing cement by mistake which as it turned out worked fine! The speaker now works well .

A bit of lubrication, cleaning and reseating of valves was done, voltages were good and all resistors were OK. I disconnected the external aerial sockets as I had no Y rated caps to hand and the radio performs well enough as an AC/DC set with a ferrite rod aerial.


The set is now back together and blasting out Radio Wales as I type, waiting for it's return to my parents on my next visit. It performs really well!
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Last edited by sexton_mallard; 17th Oct 2018 at 9:44 pm.
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