Saba Villingen de luxe radio repairs !

[high_vacuum_house]

I bought this radio late last year and had it posted as collection was just too far.

There was some damage to the cabinet upon assessment but I should be able to sort out.

The chassis worked pretty much flawlessly when powered by a variac, other than the dial lamps and a well baked EM84!

The base of the radio, made of a particle board was all but detached from the rest of the cabinet, and careful pulling made it finally part without any damage to the veneer. This will be cleaned to ensure the joints are a tight fit, and glued back in place with Titebond wood adhesive.

One of the feet had been pushed over, the nails being pulled out of the wood. A careful use of a drift and a hammer soon got the nails straight and the foot back to where it was supposed to be!

The front plastic front panel made a lot of buzzing noise when the loudspeaker was at a moderate volume, The cause was that several of the plastic posts which hold the front onto the speaker board with spire nuts had snapped off causing the speaker grill to buzz against the rear speaker board.

The rest of the spire nuts were removed and the front removed. I was surprised how distorted it has become over the years. The broken spire nut posts were reglued back on.

The next step is to clamp the front plastic panel to the table with wood and to carefully warm it up with a heat gun, Hopefully the heat will soften it a bit to allow it to relax back flat again!

Christopher Capener

[Julesomega]

That will be a lovely unit when you finish the restoration. There are a few pictures on the web but yours will be better! This model was in the style being used by several other manufacturers at the time; compare with the Beomaster 900M, Arena Stereo FF-T 1900, and Philips A6X38AT, though these were all transistor models.

[dave walsh]

Hi Julian. Christopher has always mentioned his interest in German radio equipment. His work to restore a Tefifon tape player [T573] in January 2025 [the trade name and model so unusual in every aspect with it's stylus/tape head combination] was an amazing effort. It was dropped in transit, so the also now seriously damaged Saba Villingen, should be very much worth the watch!

Dave W

[high_vacuum_house]

It is a good looking set. Very modern looking even with valves. It sounds excellent on all wavebands without needing any electronic surgery, Good quality stable components used throughout and all of the original valves even though they were being overrun as the highest mains transformer tapping is for 220V. The components and valveholders are PCB mounted on large boards with plenty of space around, so no cooking of the PCB

4 valve plus magic eye set and very sensitive on VHF. LW/MW/SW/VHF to 104MHz Output is an ECL86 coupled to a very large and high flux loudspeaker which only just fits on the speaker board!

The cabinet work should be fairly straightforward to rebuild. The top of the cabinet has a few stains and could need a bit of sanding down and cleaning up.

Christopher Capener

[dave walsh]

Great stuff Christopher! You are a profound restorer both technically and with the cabinets.You should be on the BBC Repair Shop!

Dave

[high_vacuum_house]

Well I have had a disaster with the front panel, I successfully managed to warm it up and mostly flatten it nicely, I went a bit further to get it better and then realised when I turned it over, the horizontal speaker grille slats had distorted and changed shape in about a 1 1/2” square spot near the dial cutout, like it has been left on a hot radiator. This is impossible to reverse now. I feel so silly as it was nearly good enough. I will have to repair the cabinet and reassemble the front onto the speaker board and make sure it is on display in a hidden dark corner! The likelihood of finding a good replacement front is almost nil. A shame as it sounds really good!

Christopher Capener

[Radio Wrangler]

You can work miracles with a good magnifier, some wide end tweezers and a goos hot air rework tool.... commonly used for smt soldering. the good ones have air volume and temperature controls. I've used the one at work to straighten a heat distorted plastic grill onder my wide-field stereo microscope on low mag. Donn't thinkk of things like those green Leinster heat guns, go for someting like a JBC rework tool with a selection of nozzles. The tool is the size of a TCP1 soldering iron with a thick barrel and a thick umbilical cable to an air pump and PSU box. One will give you gentle heat in a small area

If you have lots of bowed plastic bar elements, you can straighten them, and as thet straighten they shorten and thicken.

Don't try for perfection in one move, go for some improvement, work over an area and start again. Tedious, but it gets there.

Another trick I found was to go over much more area than seems necessary, maybe the whole thing because otherwise you get contrast between where you've been and where you haven't.

David

[high_vacuum_house]

Sadly, this has failed miserably to restore its condition. There must have been a lot of internal stresses in the plastic when it cooled down during the original manufacture. All attempts to reform the correct geometry worsens its shape elsewhere. It is now very crooked and has developed a couple of cracks. The aluminium bezel which was glued on has now partly come adrift as the slot for the pushbuttons has shrunk 1-2mm and now doesn't fit. I think I will reassemble the cabinet and leave it as a lesson to leave certain things alone.

Such a shame as I could probably have got it flat by gluing it onto the speaker board after removing it as it was not really a big problem.

Christopher Capener

[Joe_Lorenz]

Dear Christopher,

I assume you have got the "VL18" version of that Villingen. These show up regularly on continental sales platforms. Maybe you could locate a defective one at a reasonable price to save the front panel?

Regards, Joe

[high_vacuum_house]

Good evening,
Many thanks Joe, you have given me some hope. I think I would have done less damage to it trying to flatten it with a size 9 army boot!!

It is the VL-L variant rather than the VL18. Though they both look identical to me with the same electronic specification. I can see several VL18's on Ebay Germany. I have contacted a seller to see if one could be posted.

One idea I could try is to cover the speaker grille with a fine knitted brass wire mesh to hide the damage. The whole thing unfortunately is significantly more crooked than before I started.

Christopher Capener