GE G-50 Teledial (1937)This is a 5 tube AC radio made by GE for the 1937 model year. It has a short-lived tuning mechanism known as "teledial." This is a pre-set method of tuning in which he listener could set a number of stations and "dial" them in a fashion similar to a rotary telephone. The stations would be preset and the call letters from punched sheet that came with the radio would be inserted in each finger hole. The listener would push in the button for the station he wanted and turn the dial like a telephone. The mechanism was set up that once the preset station frequency was tuned (and this is all mechanical) a stop would keep the tuner from rotating further. In the case of this radio, the tuning mechanism is made of pot metal which disintigrated over the years. All of the stops (which are behind the dial so you can't see them) had been broken off, probably by an old repairman. The pot metal has expanded such that the buttons won't push in, so there's little hope of ever repairing the mechanism. The tuning condenser is attached directly to the bakelite wheel and it turns freely and operates the condenser. So, the radio will tune just fine, but the fancy "teledial" mechanism is lost to pot-metal disease (which is really micro rust).
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Before
This is the before picture. The radio seems to have all of its veneer, but the case has seperated in a few spots. There is a crack on the right side and someone has sunk a couple of finish nails in it to keep the case together. The finish was in pretty bad shaped with a lot of the lacquer flaked off over the years. The top of the case was discolored and badly "alligatored." This picture gives the appearance that the radio has a slanting front, but in fact, it is a straight vertical front. |
This shows 3 of the five nails that were holding the side on. No glue, just nails. Thank heaven. Dried, crudded-up and poorly applied glue is tough to remove. The nails came out easy. |
Clamped and waiting for the glue to dry. |
Stripped, nail holes plugged and sanded. The top of the radio had some badly flaked finish which had left bare wood exposed for years. This area of wood had accumulated a lot of grime and when the cabinet was stripped, the wood was a different color. It required toning lacquer to get the cabinet top to look consistent.
After replacing the electrolytic caps, I could hear one station across the entire dial. Someone had connected a wire from one of the tuning condenser's lugs to the antenna terminal wire. Why, I don't know. After cutting, still no luck, so I tried to inject a signal through the antenna and heard nothing at the frequency I used. I checked the antenna coil and oscillator coil for continuity. The antenna coil was fine, but the oscillator coil was open. I removed it and unwound the open winding. The wire is silk coverd litz wire, which is multi stranded, and the whole thing was dipped in wax. This combination, made it difficult, but I found the break, rewound the winding and the radio fired right up. I did an alignment of the IF sections and it improved the number of stations I could hear. I haven't checked the tracking yet and I expect it to be off a little as I think I lost one winding when rewinding the oscillator coil. We'll see |
The plated bezel was in good shape, except that it was dirty and tarnished to several different colors. I polished it and coated it in a layer of lacquer. The bakelite dial cleaned up nicely and I applied white lacquer to the arrow area of the dial. The center hole plug was missing, but a couple of pictures from the net confirmed that it was brass. I couldn't find a hole plug in brass, so I took a nickel plug from Home Depot, sanded it and painted it brass. |
