Advice on wiring, aerial ports and earth back of a HMV radio/record player

[adam777]

Hi there.
Am hoping somebody here might be able to give me some advice. The house i am working at has a lovely looking burr walnut HMV radiogram/recordplayer, with matching speakers.
I had to pull it out from the wall(gently) and the aerial wires pulled out, a modern wire tacked up the wall.
When looked at back there is 3 ports, and it says vhf and af... there is also a wee short wire hanging loose beside this port with 2 prongs looks like it may have gone in there?
Lastly there is a single port below which is an earth.
I cant switch it on! cant see an on off switch for the life of me.
Does any of this make any sense to anyone... any help and advice would be truly appreciated. Adam

[paulsherwin]

There are probably two sockets for the VHF aerial and one for the AM bands. The AM one may be unused as there is probably an internal AM aerial. The earth socket is also usually unused.

The VHF connection may use a moulded plastic plug which just pushes in.

[Dave Moll]

Have you checked whether the volume control (or possibly the tone control if it has one) has a switch at the anticlockwise end? You should hear a click as it is moved to/from that position.

A model number would enable more specific advice.

[dazzlevision]

The model number, unless it is very old (before approximately 1963), will start with a two and have four (possibly five) other numerals, such as 2445.

A photo of the area in question would be very helpful in order for us to give you the correct advice.

[crackle]

Photographs will help clarify what sockets there are and the specific model.

Mike

[adam777]

Apologies for late reply, and thank you very much for getting back to me. I am heading up there tomorrow morning, so will take some photos and look for more info! thanks again, Adam

[adam777]

Hi all, hope these uploaded pictures have come through ok... and didnt get the serial number! Tried both knobs to switch on, but no click, apparently when its working and switched on at wall they just press vhf button and starts.
When i pulled it out from wall, the aerial wire (pic 4) pulled out, and the single pole insert was on the floor. The 2 prong short wire hanging out the back of the rear of the radio was also hanging loose.
I opened up the plug to check wiring, the plug is a strange Bakelite affair but a repro one i think with a funny switch on top. A 1 amp fuse?! tried changing that but no difference.
If anybody could clarify what goes where i would be very grateful. cheers Adam

[nicam49]

Well, the left-hand push button is marked 'off', so by pressing any one of the other pushbuttons will/should turn it on.
btw, it's a lovely looking unit...

[Ed_Dinning]

Hi, it is a nice looking set, but it should be checked before powering up (especially a valve model) or you could do some expensive damage.

Ed

[ekjdm14]

Looks to me like the FM should be on the internal dipole (just push the brown 2-pin affair back into the top 2 holes) and the wire up the wall was being used as an AM "long" wire, would imagine the bare copper one was attached to the 1-pin plug & the other terminal may or may not have been the earth.

Obviously though do please heed the above advice before attempting to power up the set if it's state of repair/restoration is unknown. The way I read you though, you're saying the set was in regular use anyway prior to some work on the house that required you to move the set resulting in the wire-pulling?

The one amp fuse is eminently sensible, makes a nice change to hear of a low rated fuse already in place. All too often I open a plug top to find a 13 amp or worse!

[paulsherwin]

I agree with Dan, though there's some guesswork going on.

We usually recommend that domestic valve radios are fitted with a 1A plug fuse, though 3A is almost as good and much easier to find. People had to fit their own plugs when this radiogram was new, and would often leave the original 13A fuse in place. Occasionally you find really horrific things like a blown fuse bypassed by a bit of random wire or even a bit of silver foil from a fag packet.

[Herald1360]

The small brown two pin plug is connected to an internal VHF/FM aerial and may be plugged in as suggested. It should work OK if the local transmitter is fairly close (a few miles). If the plug is left out, an external VHF aerial's downlead can be plugged in instead.

The small black plug (a 1/8" wander plug) can be attached to a random length of wire and plugged in to the AM aerial socket. If the set has a 3-core mains lead, the earth socket is best left unconnected. If only a 2-core mains lead is used, the socket could be connected to a radiator or water pipe or to an external earth rod in the ground outside though nowadays that may simply add more interference than extra signal. The plethora of noisy power supplies etc in other modern equipment can make LW/MW reception poor using this kind of radio.

The flat twin plastic cable hanging down looks like the radio end of another type of indoor VHF aerial- does it form part of a tee shaped assembly with another piece of similar cable about 5 feet long across the top? It could be plugged in to the VHF aerial sockets instead of the internal aerial and might give better results. Ideally it would have another little two pin plug fitted, but the bared ends of the two wires can just be folded over to bulk them up enough to hold them when poked directly into the sockets.

[adam777]

Thank you all very much, extremely helpful. Its a lovely looking set... i dont know much about the innards, but i am a furniture restorer and the veneer is lovely!
It all makes a lot more sense now. I did buy 3 amp fuse, 1 amps hard to find! i did change for one out another plug but there is always a slight chance that it was duff, so try a new 3 amp one tomorrow.
My concern is it was maybe pulled out and the cable from the plug has tugged something off internally... i didnt pull it, but its my responsibility!
I will try the new fuse when up tomorrow, it should power up regardless of the ariel, which i now have a much clearer idea of... thank you. if no luck with fuse will need to track down someone qualified to look inside, easier said than done! Will let you know, help greatly appreciated.

[ekjdm14]

It is a gorgeous set, the photos seem to show it to be in excellent condition too. I very much doubt anything would be disturbed by pulling out of antenna plugs no matter how violently they were yanked so it's likely either a coincidence that the set stopped working around the time it was moved, or more likely perhaps that something else could be intermittent/loose inside.

What does the set's owner say about it's prior condition and state of repair? Quite important to ascertain this before it's connected really, perhaps you could point the owner in the direction of this forum if they don't know what's been done or even didn't know anything might need to be?

[dave walsh]

As Dan implies, the owner should have been around for guidance and to advise if it was going to be moved, or have dealt with disconnecting the wiring in advance, so I'm not sure that you are responsible for anything Adam. You don't say what you were actually doing, examining the Radiogram or something else perhaps Was it working previously, did you hear it in action? This is the key issue. If you do feel obliged to test it then powering it up is the first step and the aerial connections can wait but think it through first or maybe check with the customer as suggested. You are very unlikely to have caused a major problem from your description.

Dave W

[nicam49]

I've never seen one of those MK plugs with a switch on top before. Could well be the OP hasn't either.....perhaps it has been disturbed and is no longer working properly but the OP doesn't know how to check it...?

[adam777]

It was the fuse....thank the gods! i had tried replacing it earlier with a random one but it must have been dud too. Have fitted a 3 amp one, fm working off the original twin pole ariel wire, so the T shaped ariel must be for am.
Also tracked down the chap who restored it for them, so panic over!
Beautiful set, beautiful tone.
Thank you all so much for your help and advice, truly appreciated. Adam.

[Dave Moll]

Originally Posted by adam777

fm working off the original twin pole ariel wire, so the T shaped ariel must be for am.

I assume you mean that FM is working on the internal aerial connected to the two-pin plug.

If the T-shaped aerial consists of a loop as described earlier in the thread, it was probably intended as an alternative FM if the signal was too weak for the internal one. It will probably work for AM by connecting one end to the lower socket, especially for reasonably strong signals, but the original intention was simply to connect a long length of single wire to this socket.