Alba radiogram restoration.

[SteveRiley]

Hi All,

I'm looking for some advice please.

Having rescued this old radiogram, I've decided to restore it but I'm a complete novice, so these questions might be a little silly, so apologies in advance

In terms of the turntable, would I be correct in assuming this would need to be completely replaced? If so, can you point me in the direction of something that would fit & look the part? I'd be looking to connect this to a nice speaker underneath the unit as I'm struggling to see how else I would use this space.

I was just going to backlight the old radio dial as it's very interesting seeing the old channels.

As for the unit itself, what would be the advice re: sanding the timber & varnishing, cleaning the fabric etc.?

I'm still in two minds as to whether I might be better asking a professional to undertake the renovation, I'm keen to have a go but want to do the unit justice, if this is beyond the skills of a novice is there anyone on here who would be willing to take this on as described above?

Thanks in advance for your help & advice

Steve

[Paul_RK]

Hello Steve,

I'm not clear what your end goal is here, whether restoration or using the cabinet to house different electronics. The unit dates from around 1950, and the turntable is already a later replacement from 1956 or so - it's a BSR UA8, a very popular autochanger and quite restorable, though it obviously needs a knob at least. The cartridge fitted is a turnover type, a stylus for 78s on one side and for 33/45 rpm microgroove records on the other. It's from before the days of stereo records, so even if the cartridge were working well it would only be suitable for early (mostly 60+ years old) LPs and singles. A cheap Chinese cartridge could take its place and would be okay for modern vinyl but wouldn't have the turnover facility for playing 78s.

As for the radio, the range of available stations on LW/MW/SW is steadily diminishing but there are still quite a few: some, Radio Caroline for instance, will be trying to stick around. The dial will already have had backlighting, it looks as though one bulb is still in place and the other is hanging in front of the mains transformer. So, it's your call whether to restore the radio chassis as it is - the existing speaker may well be usable and the whole combination, though far from hi-fi, would produce pleasing sound and plenty of it - or to install something quite different. One popular compromise with the modern age would be to get everything working then add a Bluetooth option, perhaps taking the place of one of the wavebands, whether SW because it's not nearly the window to much of the world that it used to be, or LW because there's little there aside from Radio 4 whose long wave service will likely end very soon.

It looks as though you've an extension speaker sitting inside the cabinet, which may well have been used back in the day to provide entertainment from the radiogram to another room.

Paul

[SteveRiley]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your reply, the end goal would be have a working turntable connected to a speaker, both of which I would want to be suitable for high quality sound with a good output level.
With the fabric of the unit refreshed & the radio panel backlit, I'd be quite happy.
I want the unit to remain in use for a good few years, so if re-using the turntable or speaker meant average sound quality I don't think I'd be inclined to do the work.
I'm a building engineer so have a limited skill set when it comes to things like this, but would like to do some of it myself.

Many thanks

Steve

[paulsherwin]

A minor clarification: Radio Caroline uses a low powered transmitter which is unlikely to be (easily) receivable in Mansfield.

As Paul says, your way forward depends on what you want to do with it. Restoring the original electronics to operation isn't particularly difficult, though you will obviously have a learning curve to get through so will need a fair bit of commitment.

If you decide to restore it electrically, don't cut corners - take the time to understand how things work, and don't change components randomly hoping for a magic fix. There is plenty of helpful info here on this forum and elsewhere, but beware of just watching lots of YouTube videos, as many give incorrect or misleading info.

[SteveRiley]

The end goal would be to have a working turntable & speaker, with high quality sound & good output to enjoy a vinyl collection spanning from the 1960's to present day

[G6Tanuki]

I am not sure if it will give 'high quality sound' without significant modification.

The electronics look like a simple 5-valve radio chassis, which will give only a few Watts of audio before it overloads.

There's no tweeter, so with just that one big speaker you're not going to be getting much audio response above about 7 or 8KHz. I guess that's OK if you like your audio to sound muddy and not hear all the music that's actually on the records.

It's mono. Again you are not going to be enjoying the full content from your records.

I would be fitting a modern ( stereo) amplifier, and replacing the rotten looking speaker with a tweeter/woofer setup and crossover network. But that will still leave you with the need for a second speaker for the other stereo channel, and if that were to be fitted in a box of a different shape/construction than the original radiogram you will likely run into issues of sound balance.

A quandary!!

[julie_m]

There are two ways you could go from here:

(1) Keep the radiogram as original as possible. Restore the radio chassis (a generic 4 valve + rectifier setup, well-understood in its day, and totally do-able with some simple tools and a healthy of patience and determination) and the autochanger (a BSR UA8, if I'm not mistaken; not a bad changer at all, when running nicely). If you're lucky, that will just require a 3D-printed knob and a modern stereo ceramic cartridge wired for mono. You'll end up with a machine capable of playing vinyl records, and 78s maybe with a change of stylus, and picking up whatever broadcasts can still be found on the MW and LW bands together with whatever portion of SW the set covers. The amplifier looks like being the weak spot, with only one valve to drive the speaker. It might sound fine close up, but you probably won't want to listen to for long at high volume settings.

(2) Go all-out on building a modern entertainment system inside the shell of the old radiogram, which you try to modify in such a way as to look as though it was made that way in the first place. Rip out the old guts and replace with 21st-century innards, including a Raspberry Pi or other small computer to handle MP3s, Internet streaming/podcasts and Bluetooth. Fit a touchscreen monitor where the tuning dial used to be (and maybe shaft encoders on some or all of the knobs). Mount a single subwoofer in the middle, and cut new holes for a mid-and-high speaker (c. 10-12cm.) above and on each side of it for "2.1" sound, and amplifiers and power packs to suit. (The high and middle frequencies are naturally more directional than the low frequencies, so it won't harm the stereo effect as much as it looks as though it might; and probably not even as much as you might if you used the cabinet speaker for one channel and a second, separate speaker for the other channel.) Keep the UA8 changer (which, judging by the upward-facing tuning dial, probably is already a replacement for an original 78rpm-only turntable; front tuning scales were the norm in the "LP" era), so you can still play records.

Anything between those extremes is likely to disappoint.

[Sideband]

In original form, these could never have been described as 'high quality'. They gave an acceptable sound and volume for the general requirements of the day considering that most people were quite happy with mono sound and about 3 watts of audio. You can't make the radiogram into something it was never designed to be without completely rebuilding it as suggested above. Even then it would be a compromise if you kept internal speakers.

[Paul_RK]

Looks as though this may be the model you have:

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/balcombe_alba_475b475.html ,

with the original record deck a Garrard autochanger for 78s only. Personally I think you might well be agreeably surprised by the results of restoring it as it stands, that Truvox speaker is a nice one if the cone hasn't rotted, and much more efficient than modern hi-fi speaker designs: and the unit has a certain style, whereas visual appeal would be hard to achieve under the lid if the radio dial were to be retained and joined by the controls required by something new. Almost impossible though that anything you do with the cabinet would repay you in terms of resale value, so it's a labour of love to work on it in any way at all, and all you need ask yourself is what manner of audio furniture you would like to end up with.

[Edward Huggins]

To fit a modern turntable suitably isolated from the cabinet, install a stereo amplifier with its controls accessible and 2 well spaced loudspeakers/loudspeaker systems will require so much alteration to the original cabinet I do not think you will be pleased with such a compromised result.