1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio - UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum

howard · 20th Dec 2010, 4:35 pm

Hello again,

Now here is a nice 1937 radio. It's housed in a fairly compact moulded brown bakelite cabinet and internally it is modular in design with three chassis built onto a wooden platform, in the middle its power supply chassis and vertically mounted either side its RF tuner and AF amplifier chassis. Looking through the Philips sets on RMOrg built in 1937 there is a continental version of this radio, the 461A 'Ouverture', which has the same case and chassis layout but with side contact valves, which was built in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland.

Apart from one missing knob and a little scratch this example arrived in stunning original cosmetic condition and internally completely original. Apparently it had been working well until around 10 years ago. Inside all its original valves were still in place including a splendid looking Philips 1821 rectifier. However, much of the sheathing on the cables between the chassis had decayed badly with bare wires showing through everywhere. The original Philips service manual for the 727A is available here ...

http://www.service-data.com/section.php/5926/1

The case on this set slides off the wooden base after removal of its knobs (the front two are a pain to get off as access to their grub screws is via two tiny holes), 3 loudspeaker clips and four bolts/nuts securing the base to the case (one of which had rusted through and was broken), and detachment of its dial cord (missing from this set), waveband indicator cable, and 2 earth wires. All the wires attached to tags on the top and bottom of the mains transformer had rotten sheathing although many others in the looms were still fine. All its original black pitch capacitors were still in place and a couple of lozenge shaped ones had split open, and one wire with an open circuit 2k ohm resistor on the end had come away from the RF chassis.

The mains transformer was tested for leakage using my megger and it was perfect. The primary of the output transformer measured spot on at 600 ohms and the impedance of its permanent magnet loudspeaker measured OK at just over 4 ohms. Even its dial lamp was good. All the valves were removed for safe keeping, the four bolts securing the power supply chassis to the base were removed and the chassis turned over onto its side and I set about resheathing all the wiring from the transformer. The tags on the transformer are inaccessible unless the entire assembly is dismantled so I unsoldered all the wires at their other ends, unwound the looms one at a time, removed the remains of the rotted sheathing, straightened and cleaned all the solid core wires with fine wet and dry sandpaper and carefully fitted new green sheathing over them and reconnected the wires. It took about 12 hours to complete this task, it was not easy getting the sheathing back onto the wires and 3-4 metres of wiring needed doing. A couple of rubber grommets fitted onto the chassis through which the looms pass were found to have perished so they were replaced.

The detached open circuit 2k ohm resistor was replaced and reattached to its tag on the tuner chassis. I then set about replacing its black pitch capacitors. It is not possible to stuff pitch capacitor cases so now bright yellow Vishay polyesters are in evidence. I tested the old capacitors, all were leaky but one or two still had some capacitance. The valve bases were cleaned with Servisol 10 and the valves reinstated and then I took the chassis around to Ron Bryan for its initial start up using his variac and amazingly it worked, in fact it worked well and on all three wavebands ! There was a bit of hum on some stations so its two smoothing capacitors were worn and its volume control potentiometer was showing signs of serious wear. A 25uf electrolytic still in circuit was tested and was found to be knackered so as soon as I got home a new capacitor was stuffed into its case.

The volume potentiometer was well and truly knackered, it was removed from the chassis and dismantled, which entailed prising up the rolled over edge of the outer aluminium can around a paxolin disc on the back, and 30% of the track was found to be absent. This 500k ohm log potentiometer is a pre-war continental Philips type with an open switch on the front so I travelled up to Mike Lewis in Luton to see if I could find a replacement. Fortunately he had a couple, both used and one in good condition but its short 6mm diameter spindle was missing. I removed the spindle from the original potentiometer but that was a loose fit in the replacement so Ron very kindly made up a shim to steady it, drilled and tapped a thread through it and then fitted a screw to secure it to the boss. The pot was fitted onto the chassis and it works perfectly.

The wooden chassis base had been attacked by woodworm and some of the holes looked recent but it was still strong enough to support the heavy chassis so I removed all three chassis and treated it with Rentokil low-odour woodworm treatment. After that had soaked in I filled in the holes underneath with Pollyfilla and then brushed a coat of thinned matt black paint over the board. Two of the four round felt feet were missing so I replaced all four with new ones cut from some thick green felt that I keep. I also used strips of the same material to replace the rotted gasket under the loudspeaker. The three chassis were then fitted back onto the base.

The hum on station was irritating so the two 32uf smoothing capacitors were removed and tested, they weren't that leaky surprisingly but their capacitance had dropped low. These have continental 18mm screw mounts and as I had a couple of brand new replacements made by F&T for Jan Wüsten, I fitted them and they stopped the hum. They are somewhat smaller than the originals and don't look quite right really so I have kept the originals with a view to stuffing them invisibly some time in the future and reinstating them. I checked all the voltages on the valves and the resistances of critical resistors and all were fine. The metallic coating on the FC4 frequency converter valve had cracked all round where the base and glass join which caused crackling at times so I found a NOS valve locally on ebay for £5 and fitted it. I considered completely realigning the set but being 73 years old I thought there could be a risk of breaking cores, it was working very well anyway except at the high frequency end of MW where it stopped short at 1500 khz so I very carefully performed MW RF realignment.

Next was reinstatement of the dial cord and refitting of the case and unfortunately the Philips manuals for the 727A and European 461A models have no layout for the dial cord, so I asked on the forum and Mick (vinrads) kindly uploaded a drawing of the way he had fitted them to his set and then Desmond uploaded the original layout taken from a French manual.....

https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...7&d=1289652101

This set has two cords but one is very tricky to fit as three of the pulleys are attached to the case. Anyway I managed to replace both cords - it took me a whole day to fit them and to return the chassis into its case, it was a nightmare !

While I was up in Luton I also managed to find an original tone control knob but its shaft was broken so I took another Philips knob with the same diameter shaft to use to repair it. Edward (Igranic) very kindly repaired the shaft on the knob, as follows ....

1. damaged knob shaft faced off
2. a length of donor shaft parted off
3. shaft and knob bored oversize
4. both parts fitted on to a turned brass sleeve using epoxy resin
5. shaft drilled and thread tapped for grub screw

As can be seen in the pic below, the repair was done extremely well, and rather better than just gluing the old bits together.

The case just needed a clean and polish with Brasso and it came up like new. And lastly, the original mains lead was badly worn but I managed to get some nice original lead from Mike Lewis and fitted that.

I am very impressed with this pre-war Philips radio, despite it being extremely difficult to work on. It is a good looking 1930s set and well built and it works remarkably well with good sensitivity picking up just about everything on all bands. It sounds superb and fills the whole house with sound.

My thanks to Ron Bryan, Mick, Desmond and Edward for their help.

Howard

vinrads · 20th Dec 2010, 8:01 pm

Well Howard you have done it again , what a splendid job and the cabinet looks pristine , good idea with the knob ,

I am pleased you managed the dial drive it's a typical philips one a right ba

rd thanks for sharing it with us regards Mick.

dave walsh · 20th Dec 2010, 8:18 pm

Great job Howard, your usual standard. Thanks for posting. Richard Booth has one of these on his site. He seems impressed but wonders about the designers state of mind

. I presume this three way split was the only way to get it all in to a smalll stylish cabinet using the existing technology.Does the RF stage particularly enhance SW I wonder? There is mention of a Barretter-did you find it? He puts the restoration price up high explaining that there will be quite a lot involved. This supports your "difficult to work on" assessment which I suspect might actually be an understatement. Excellent!
Dave W

ColinB · 20th Dec 2010, 8:55 pm

Good work!

I expect you know, but the FC4 can have the wire rebound and the base fixed in place with glue, restoring it (hopefully) to working order for use in another set.

johnn · 20th Dec 2010, 10:12 pm

Well done Howard. I put one on here as a "Success story."
I also found the drive cord a nightmare. Mr Past Times has an amazing barreter one. He advised me to keep clear of the liquid in the smoothing capacitors (carcinogenic I think the word is). Mine were absolutely empty & I put the new ones inside the cans, so they screwed down.
They do sound terrific!
John

howard · 20th Dec 2010, 11:53 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by vinrads

Well Howard you have done it again , what a splendid job and the cabinet looks pristine , good idea with the knob ,

I am pleased you managed the dial drive it's a typical philips one a right ba

rd thanks for sharing it with us regards Mick.

Hello Mick,

The bakelite case on this set is really nice and still shiny, amazing for a 73 year old. Replacement of the second dial cord was really fiddly .....

Quote:

Originally Posted by dave walsh

........Richard Booth has one of these on his site. He seems impressed but wonders about the designers state of mind

. I presume this three way split was the only way to get it all in to a smalll stylish cabinet using the existing technology.Does the RF stage particularly enhance SW I wonder? There is mention of a Barretter-did you find it? He puts the restoration price up high explaining that there will be quite a lot involved. This supports your "difficult to work on" assessment which I suspect might actually be an understatement. Excellent!
Dave W

Hello Dave,

So he has and it's quite a nice one. His is the 371U AC/DC model with the C1 type baretter. I hope I haven't put anyone off buying it as it is in need of a new dial cord ........

You're probably right about the 3 chassis construction which does make it more compact but it is still a very tight fit in its case.

This one works well on all wavebands, and SW is good for a British built set.

Howard

JoshWard · 21st Dec 2010, 12:26 am

Very nice Howard.

I had the 727U version (now living with ColinB, how is it going Colin?)

Attractive looking set but it scared the hell out of me! I do miss it in a way, as it does have such an oddball (even for Philips) design but as soon as I think about working on it I no longer miss it quite as much

AlanBeckett · 21st Dec 2010, 12:50 am

Howard,
Somewhere I've got some Silver loaded Epoxy if you want to try to recover your old FC4.
Alan

howard · 21st Dec 2010, 11:32 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by howard

So he has and it's quite a nice one. His is the 371U AC/DC model with the C1 type baretter.......... Howard

Oops that should read 727U. I get confused between these two model numbers as I'm currently working on a 371U which is nowhere near as well built as this one.

Howard

howard · 21st Dec 2010, 11:47 am

Quote:

Originally Posted by ColinB

Good work!

I expect you know, but the FC4 can have the wire rebound and the base fixed in place with glue, restoring it (hopefully) to working order for use in another set.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AlanBeckett

Howard,
Somewhere I've got some Silver loaded Epoxy if you want to try to recover your old FC4. Alan

The NOS FC4 turned up on ebay and as it was less than 10 miles away it was more expedient to acquire and fit that. The original FC4 works just as well as the new one, it just crackles and loses gain sometimes due to breakage of the metallised coating. It needs to be dismantled and the base glued back on securely and the metallised coating reconnected somehow. Next time I see Phil Taylor I'll see if he will repair it. I daresay valves like this are getting rare now.

Howard

howard · 21st Dec 2010, 2:09 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by johnn

Well done Howard. I put one on here as a "Success story."
I also found the drive cord a nightmare. Mr Past Times has an amazing barreter one. He advised me to keep clear of the liquid in the smoothing capacitors (carcinogenic I think the word is). Mine were absolutely empty & I put the new ones inside the cans, so they screwed down.
They do sound terrific!
John

Hello John,

Yes I read your write-up and you seem to have encountered much the same problems as I did with this one, namely woodworm, noisy FC4 valve, dial cord, rotten cable sheathing ... and I too found just one bad resistor, they've lasted remarkably well in this Philips set.

Do the tops come off the original smoothing capacitors quite easily ? I might stuff the originals sooner rather than later.

Howard

Tim · 21st Dec 2010, 2:36 pm

FC4's do lose gain at higher frequencies too. It's quite common to find a set with an FC4that works perfectly on LW, but gets progressively deaf as you tune to the higher frequency end of the MW band. I had one that would start well, and then suddenly the volume dropped once the valve got hot.

ColinB · 21st Dec 2010, 5:41 pm

Hi Josh,

Yes, progress is being made, I've got the chassis up and running (O/C anode feed resistor to the rect), and performance is um, as expected (haven't recapped it yet, so it's doing well to work at all

). I haven't yet summoned the courage to do the dial cord, however.

Cheers,

Colin

johnn · 21st Dec 2010, 9:04 pm

Howard, the tops of the smoothing capacitors seem to be spot welded somehow, so I took the nut off & uncrimped. I can't remember exactly, but I think I fibreglassed the nut assembly back in & held square in a tube as a jig. The innards are interlocking circular aluminium plates which come out easily. The liquid had completely gone from both mine. Does not look to have been violent!
I have another 727A for restoration & this ones are full. The capacitance is Ok & they reformed with no hum. Amazing I think!
I left my FC4 valve as when I changed it the spot on tuning was changed. When a NOS one arrives here soon I will compare old/new on MW.
John.

Hybrid tellies · 22nd Dec 2010, 9:56 pm

Nice one Howard. A very interesting set.

geofy · 23rd Dec 2010, 12:49 pm

Salvador Dali must have designed this one! The usual Howard Standard. Well done.

JoshWard · 23rd Dec 2010, 5:25 pm

Glad to hear it's now going Colin

Seeing your set Howard is almost tempting me to find another...I will resist the temptation though

tedzed1 · 24th Dec 2010, 12:52 am

Hello Howard, superb write-up as usual, it looks superb, I followed this with great interest, as my next project is a philips 671a, a beast of a radio.

Patrick Dixon · 24th Dec 2010, 12:54 pm

Another interesting write-up Howard - but is that a little rust I can see on the chassis?

There's hope for me yet .... ;-)

benjamin77 · 28th Dec 2010, 10:27 pm

Hi Howard, well done.

I can certainly vouch for the plentiful suply of crumbling wiring in these sets. I have just started a repair on my own that has sat on the shelf for over a year.

I hope that it turns out as well as yours has, what is the sound like from the sets. I would imagine that like most early Philips its pretty good.

20th Dec 2010, 4:35 pm	#1
howard Nonode Join Date: May 2005 Location: Godalming, Surrey, UK. Posts: 2,593	1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Hello again, Now here is a nice 1937 radio. It's housed in a fairly compact moulded brown bakelite cabinet and internally it is modular in design with three chassis built onto a wooden platform, in the middle its power supply chassis and vertically mounted either side its RF tuner and AF amplifier chassis. Looking through the Philips sets on RMOrg built in 1937 there is a continental version of this radio, the 461A 'Ouverture', which has the same case and chassis layout but with side contact valves, which was built in the Netherlands, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Switzerland. Apart from one missing knob and a little scratch this example arrived in stunning original cosmetic condition and internally completely original. Apparently it had been working well until around 10 years ago. Inside all its original valves were still in place including a splendid looking Philips 1821 rectifier. However, much of the sheathing on the cables between the chassis had decayed badly with bare wires showing through everywhere. The original Philips service manual for the 727A is available here ... http://www.service-data.com/section.php/5926/1 The case on this set slides off the wooden base after removal of its knobs (the front two are a pain to get off as access to their grub screws is via two tiny holes), 3 loudspeaker clips and four bolts/nuts securing the base to the case (one of which had rusted through and was broken), and detachment of its dial cord (missing from this set), waveband indicator cable, and 2 earth wires. All the wires attached to tags on the top and bottom of the mains transformer had rotten sheathing although many others in the looms were still fine. All its original black pitch capacitors were still in place and a couple of lozenge shaped ones had split open, and one wire with an open circuit 2k ohm resistor on the end had come away from the RF chassis. The mains transformer was tested for leakage using my megger and it was perfect. The primary of the output transformer measured spot on at 600 ohms and the impedance of its permanent magnet loudspeaker measured OK at just over 4 ohms. Even its dial lamp was good. All the valves were removed for safe keeping, the four bolts securing the power supply chassis to the base were removed and the chassis turned over onto its side and I set about resheathing all the wiring from the transformer. The tags on the transformer are inaccessible unless the entire assembly is dismantled so I unsoldered all the wires at their other ends, unwound the looms one at a time, removed the remains of the rotted sheathing, straightened and cleaned all the solid core wires with fine wet and dry sandpaper and carefully fitted new green sheathing over them and reconnected the wires. It took about 12 hours to complete this task, it was not easy getting the sheathing back onto the wires and 3-4 metres of wiring needed doing. A couple of rubber grommets fitted onto the chassis through which the looms pass were found to have perished so they were replaced. The detached open circuit 2k ohm resistor was replaced and reattached to its tag on the tuner chassis. I then set about replacing its black pitch capacitors. It is not possible to stuff pitch capacitor cases so now bright yellow Vishay polyesters are in evidence. I tested the old capacitors, all were leaky but one or two still had some capacitance. The valve bases were cleaned with Servisol 10 and the valves reinstated and then I took the chassis around to Ron Bryan for its initial start up using his variac and amazingly it worked, in fact it worked well and on all three wavebands ! There was a bit of hum on some stations so its two smoothing capacitors were worn and its volume control potentiometer was showing signs of serious wear. A 25uf electrolytic still in circuit was tested and was found to be knackered so as soon as I got home a new capacitor was stuffed into its case. The volume potentiometer was well and truly knackered, it was removed from the chassis and dismantled, which entailed prising up the rolled over edge of the outer aluminium can around a paxolin disc on the back, and 30% of the track was found to be absent. This 500k ohm log potentiometer is a pre-war continental Philips type with an open switch on the front so I travelled up to Mike Lewis in Luton to see if I could find a replacement. Fortunately he had a couple, both used and one in good condition but its short 6mm diameter spindle was missing. I removed the spindle from the original potentiometer but that was a loose fit in the replacement so Ron very kindly made up a shim to steady it, drilled and tapped a thread through it and then fitted a screw to secure it to the boss. The pot was fitted onto the chassis and it works perfectly. The wooden chassis base had been attacked by woodworm and some of the holes looked recent but it was still strong enough to support the heavy chassis so I removed all three chassis and treated it with Rentokil low-odour woodworm treatment. After that had soaked in I filled in the holes underneath with Pollyfilla and then brushed a coat of thinned matt black paint over the board. Two of the four round felt feet were missing so I replaced all four with new ones cut from some thick green felt that I keep. I also used strips of the same material to replace the rotted gasket under the loudspeaker. The three chassis were then fitted back onto the base. The hum on station was irritating so the two 32uf smoothing capacitors were removed and tested, they weren't that leaky surprisingly but their capacitance had dropped low. These have continental 18mm screw mounts and as I had a couple of brand new replacements made by F&T for Jan Wüsten, I fitted them and they stopped the hum. They are somewhat smaller than the originals and don't look quite right really so I have kept the originals with a view to stuffing them invisibly some time in the future and reinstating them. I checked all the voltages on the valves and the resistances of critical resistors and all were fine. The metallic coating on the FC4 frequency converter valve had cracked all round where the base and glass join which caused crackling at times so I found a NOS valve locally on ebay for £5 and fitted it. I considered completely realigning the set but being 73 years old I thought there could be a risk of breaking cores, it was working very well anyway except at the high frequency end of MW where it stopped short at 1500 khz so I very carefully performed MW RF realignment. Next was reinstatement of the dial cord and refitting of the case and unfortunately the Philips manuals for the 727A and European 461A models have no layout for the dial cord, so I asked on the forum and Mick (vinrads) kindly uploaded a drawing of the way he had fitted them to his set and then Desmond uploaded the original layout taken from a French manual..... https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...7&d=1289652101 This set has two cords but one is very tricky to fit as three of the pulleys are attached to the case. Anyway I managed to replace both cords - it took me a whole day to fit them and to return the chassis into its case, it was a nightmare ! While I was up in Luton I also managed to find an original tone control knob but its shaft was broken so I took another Philips knob with the same diameter shaft to use to repair it. Edward (Igranic) very kindly repaired the shaft on the knob, as follows .... 1. damaged knob shaft faced off 2. a length of donor shaft parted off 3. shaft and knob bored oversize 4. both parts fitted on to a turned brass sleeve using epoxy resin 5. shaft drilled and thread tapped for grub screw As can be seen in the pic below, the repair was done extremely well, and rather better than just gluing the old bits together. The case just needed a clean and polish with Brasso and it came up like new. And lastly, the original mains lead was badly worn but I managed to get some nice original lead from Mike Lewis and fitted that. I am very impressed with this pre-war Philips radio, despite it being extremely difficult to work on. It is a good looking 1930s set and well built and it works remarkably well with good sensitivity picking up just about everything on all bands. It sounds superb and fills the whole house with sound. My thanks to Ron Bryan, Mick, Desmond and Edward for their help. Howard Attached Thumbnails

20th Dec 2010, 8:01 pm	#2
vinrads Dekatron Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Chesterfield, Derbyshire, UK. Posts: 3,763	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Well Howard you have done it again , what a splendid job and the cabinet looks pristine , good idea with the knob , I am pleased you managed the dial drive it's a typical philips one a right bard thanks for sharing it with us regards Mick.

20th Dec 2010, 8:18 pm	#3
dave walsh Dekatron Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Ramsbottom (Nr Bury) Lancs or Bexhill (Nr Hastings) Sussex. Posts: 5,817	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Great job Howard, your usual standard. Thanks for posting. Richard Booth has one of these on his site. He seems impressed but wonders about the designers state of mind. I presume this three way split was the only way to get it all in to a smalll stylish cabinet using the existing technology.Does the RF stage particularly enhance SW I wonder? There is mention of a Barretter-did you find it? He puts the restoration price up high explaining that there will be quite a lot involved. This supports your "difficult to work on" assessment which I suspect might actually be an understatement. Excellent! Dave W

20th Dec 2010, 8:55 pm	#4
ColinB Heptode Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Newton Abbot, Devon, UK. Posts: 761	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Good work! I expect you know, but the FC4 can have the wire rebound and the base fixed in place with glue, restoring it (hopefully) to working order for use in another set.

20th Dec 2010, 10:12 pm	#5
johnn Retired Dormant Member Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Scunthorpe, UK Posts: 154	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Well done Howard. I put one on here as a "Success story." I also found the drive cord a nightmare. Mr Past Times has an amazing barreter one. He advised me to keep clear of the liquid in the smoothing capacitors (carcinogenic I think the word is). Mine were absolutely empty & I put the new ones inside the cans, so they screwed down. They do sound terrific! John

21st Dec 2010, 12:26 am	#7
JoshWard Octode Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Near Stowmarket, Suffolk, UK. Posts: 1,962	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Very nice Howard. I had the 727U version (now living with ColinB, how is it going Colin?) Attractive looking set but it scared the hell out of me! I do miss it in a way, as it does have such an oddball (even for Philips) design but as soon as I think about working on it I no longer miss it quite as much

21st Dec 2010, 12:50 am	#8
AlanBeckett Rest in Peace Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Burton upon Trent, East Staffordshire, UK. Posts: 1,686	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Howard, Somewhere I've got some Silver loaded Epoxy if you want to try to recover your old FC4. Alan

21st Dec 2010, 2:36 pm	#12
Tim Dekatron Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, UK. Posts: 3,310	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio FC4's do lose gain at higher frequencies too. It's quite common to find a set with an FC4that works perfectly on LW, but gets progressively deaf as you tune to the higher frequency end of the MW band. I had one that would start well, and then suddenly the volume dropped once the valve got hot. __________________ "Nothing is as dangerous as being too modern;one is apt to grow old fashioned quite suddenly."

21st Dec 2010, 5:41 pm	#13
ColinB Heptode Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Newton Abbot, Devon, UK. Posts: 761	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Hi Josh, Yes, progress is being made, I've got the chassis up and running (O/C anode feed resistor to the rect), and performance is um, as expected (haven't recapped it yet, so it's doing well to work at all ). I haven't yet summoned the courage to do the dial cord, however. Cheers, Colin

21st Dec 2010, 9:04 pm	#14
johnn Retired Dormant Member Join Date: Jun 2003 Location: Scunthorpe, UK Posts: 154	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Howard, the tops of the smoothing capacitors seem to be spot welded somehow, so I took the nut off & uncrimped. I can't remember exactly, but I think I fibreglassed the nut assembly back in & held square in a tube as a jig. The innards are interlocking circular aluminium plates which come out easily. The liquid had completely gone from both mine. Does not look to have been violent! I have another 727A for restoration & this ones are full. The capacitance is Ok & they reformed with no hum. Amazing I think! I left my FC4 valve as when I changed it the spot on tuning was changed. When a NOS one arrives here soon I will compare old/new on MW. John. Last edited by johnn; 21st Dec 2010 at 9:05 pm. Reason: extra text

22nd Dec 2010, 9:56 pm	#15
Hybrid tellies Nonode Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: 1966-1976 Coverack in Cornwall and Helston Cornwall. 1976-present Bristol/Bath area. Posts: 2,967	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Nice one Howard. A very interesting set. __________________ Simon BVWS member

23rd Dec 2010, 12:49 pm	#16
geofy Retired Dormant Member Join Date: Jun 2006 Posts: 1,798	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Salvador Dali must have designed this one! The usual Howard Standard. Well done.

23rd Dec 2010, 5:25 pm	#17
JoshWard Octode Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Near Stowmarket, Suffolk, UK. Posts: 1,962	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Glad to hear it's now going Colin Seeing your set Howard is almost tempting me to find another...I will resist the temptation though

24th Dec 2010, 12:52 am	#18
tedzed1 Hexode Join Date: Dec 2009 Location: Tamworth, Staffordshire, UK. Posts: 320	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Hello Howard, superb write-up as usual, it looks superb, I followed this with great interest, as my next project is a philips 671a, a beast of a radio. __________________ Cheers Paul.

24th Dec 2010, 12:54 pm	#19
Patrick Dixon Hexode Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: Bristol, UK. Posts: 480	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Another interesting write-up Howard - but is that a little rust I can see on the chassis? There's hope for me yet .... ;-)

28th Dec 2010, 10:27 pm	#20
benjamin77 Retired Dormant Member Join Date: May 2009 Location: High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK. Posts: 326	Re: 1937 Philips 727A AC mains 5 valve MW/SW/LW table radio Hi Howard, well done. I can certainly vouch for the plentiful suply of crumbling wiring in these sets. I have just started a repair on my own that has sat on the shelf for over a year. I hope that it turns out as well as yours has, what is the sound like from the sets. I would imagine that like most early Philips its pretty good.