[Beardyman]

Afternoon all.
I picked up this little Bakelite set as it looked like one of the Pilot Little Maestro variants, it was in a filthy state externally & internally come to think of it!
A quick look inside showed the usual assortment of cracked/mouldering/leaking capacitors. The metal rectifiers were long gone & someone had then replaced them with a half wave valve which would have fitted a B7G socket except that was gone as well. The ubiquitous 1N4007 had been simply solder across the appropriate pins. One of the valves was loose in its metal shroud but luckily I had a spare, the loose one will be fettled later. Although the scale shows a SW band this little blighter is MW/LW only which leads me to think perhaps what we have here is a "bitsa" from one or more other sets of the same ilk. It has a filament transformer which I now know was quite common, it was either that or some really BIG droppers! Most of the resistors were still in spec & the speaker had a date stamp of 1957. Whether its the original one I really don't know. The mains switch was welded but I was able to take it apart & make good the damage. After addressing the HT supply by putting a 680R 5W resistor after the 1N4007 this brought the HT up to about 200V by my reckoning. Application of mains brought forth lights & glowing filaments, HT was spot on. As the set warmed up there were some peculiar sounds emanating from it, it was oscillating all over the place, almost like a Theremin!
Lo & behold, the Phantom Twiddler had been in there! The IF can cores were all right up the top & padding capacitors all screwed hard down. After about an hour or so of twiddling there came forth recognisable music. At this point it was "tune for maximum smoke". Although it could probably be improved with a proper set up I'm quite happy with it. Not a world beater by any means but it does have a certain charm, it now lives in the guest bedroom & looks thoroughly at home.