1954 Marconiphone T37DA Companion AC/DC 5 valve MW/LW compact table radio

[howard]

Hello again,

This is one of the two sets that I won at the last Wootton Bassett auction and there was a bit of interest in this lot as it went for £18, as apart from small cracks in its perspex knobs and one small chip on the painted front this little set was in above average condition and complete. This was obviously a budget model in its day but what is interesting about it is its very unusual shape and its red bakelite cabinet. Another feature I've not seen before is the operation of its waveband switch, to change waveband one presses on the tuning knob and turns it which is rather clumsy as one needs to hold onto the set to stop it from moving. It took me longer than usual to restore it as I couldn't locate a complete service manual, just a circuit diagram. I acquired one of these in a box of scrap sets ages ago but sadly that one was beyond repair and it got binned and bits from it including two good knobs were given away - I wished I'd kept them now !

I dismantled the set, one knob came off OK, the shaft on the second one disintegrated when its rusty spring clip broke. I reconstructed the knob shaft immediately, sticking all the tiny bits of perspex back together again with superglue and holding it together with a PVC sleeve. Inside the dial cord was found to be broken and had virtually come off but apart from loads of dust it looked in good nick including a new looking UL41. The T37DA has a complement of Marconiphone valves, X142, W142, DH142, N142 and U142 which are clones of Mullard UCH42, UF41, UBC41, UL41 and UY41 valves, and apart from the output valve all were still present. I brushed all the dust off the chassis, cleaned it with white spirit, cleaned the valve pins/sockets, volume pot, waveband switch with Servisol 10, replaced its Hunts and wax capacitors with new polyester axials, fitted a new 2 core mains lead and plug with a 1A fuse, switched it on and away she went working on both wavebands but not very well.

It took me ages to work out how to fit a new dial cord but eventually I got it right. The set needed realignment so I then had to work out where the coils and trimmers were and I succeeded. The lower frequency ends of the wavebands are set by adjusting the cores in the two coils underneath, the higher frequency ends by adjusting the trimmers alongside the tuning capacitor. On the other side of the tuning capacitor are the aerial trimmers and there's also a LW loading coil on the top of the chassis. The set responded well to realignment but it still wasn't working as well as expected so I checked through its resistors, and replaced a 10M ohm resistor which had climbed to 13M and a 470k ohm which had risen to a staggering 720k ohms - needless to say replacement of the latter brought about a worthwhile improvement.

I cleaned its unmarked outer case with white spirit, polished it with Brasso, cleaned the painted front with upholstery cleaner, mixed up some mushroom coloured touch up paint from a selection of acrylics and gloss varnish and touched in the chip on the front and reassembled the set. I eventually found a plastic sleeve to go over the knob shaft so stuck that on with UHU adhesive and its repair is robust now. Hopefully a couple of spare knobs will eventually turn up at a future event.

This little radio works well, its sensitivity is very good and it sounds good for a set its size. It does tend to pick up ambient interference from other electronics in the house on LW though but Radio 4 comes over loud and clear. It is certainly an usual shape and colour !

Howard

[Tazman1966]

What an unusual shape but a nice result

[JoshWard]

Very nice

Mine also needs restringing so I might be in contact with you for that

Looking forwards to doing mine, if only the postman had taken better care of it....


Josh.

[howard]

Originally Posted by Tazman1966

What an unusual shape but a nice result

It's a totally different shape to all my other sets, but I'm getting used to it ! The other set I won at the auction was the 1935 McMichael 235 and that's an even more eccentric design.

Originally Posted by JoshWard

Very nice
Mine also needs restringing so I might be in contact with you for that
Looking forwards to doing mine, if only the postman had taken better care of it.... Josh.

It's a great shame when a radio gets damaged in transit - the cases on these are flimsy. Send me a PM if you need any help fixing yours. Maybe someone on the forum could help you out with an intact T37DA cabinet ?


Here's the set as presented prior to the auction, as can be seen it was in pretty good condition.

http://www.bvws.org.uk/auctions/phot...es/s1h0390.jpg

Howard

[JoshWard]

Thanks for the offer of help Will take it up when I build up the courage to do this set. At the moment it's sitting beside me in the study (mum hasn't told me to move it yet.... )

Josh.

[Tim]

Nice one Howard.

Looks as though it was designed by Salvador Dahli!

[Keith_B]

Hi Howard
The T37DA was the first vintage radio I collected. A work mate brought it in to put in the skip. I rescued it. The case was broken after he had dropped it putting it in his car and their was no back. I made a back & glued the case back together with araldite. This was over ten years ago. It had a full set of original valves and worked OK. Even though it looks a bit tatty I wouldn't part with it, after all it started my collection

[chipp1968]

I like the look of that .Its more interesting than the average set of this period .