Troubador Deco Ivory Bakelite AM/SW Radio

This is another set I've had on the shelf, or in storage, since the early 1990's. It has no brand name, or model number, anywhere on it and at first I had no idea who made or sold it, but after several recent days of online searches I finally found a schematic thanks to a mostly intact licensing label on the rear of the chassis that has the only hint at a name. It has "W. M. Co." on it which I finally discovered was the Warwick Manufacturing Company.

I also found that the Spiegel company sold radios of this style under their brand name "Air Castle", and found an AM only version listed in my Antique Radio books. But my set is an AM/SW model and I did not see a shortwave version listed.

I also found a picture of another set like this one that was identified as a "Troubador" brand, and it is the same AM/SW version. A comment on it mentioned the Warwick Manufacturing Co. as the manufacturer, which led to finding the correct schematic.

So this radio is probably a Troubador, and according to RadioMuseum.org, Troubadour was a Warwick brand name, so I'm going with it over Air Castle until proven otherwise.

I actually have two of these radios, this one is white painted Bakelite, and the other is walnut Bakelite, and is an AM only farm (battery) set. It appears to be a Troubador model 2401. On both radios the license labels have "W. M. Co." on them.
I had already cleaned up the cabinet 30 years ago, but the chassis is still waiting to be restored.
The schematic and chassis diagram for this set is the Warwick model 0-71 in Riders Vol 11. For Warwick model numbers the "0" is the last digit of the year, in this case 1940, and the second digit, the "7", is the number of tubes in the set, in this case including the resistor ballast "tube".

This chassis is a mess. It's missing all the tubes including the filament ballast, the speaker cone has a lot of cracks, but fortunately is still repairable, and worst of all, it's covered in some sort of greasy, sooty crap.
Underneath it's a little cleaner, but most all the capacitors and resistors need replaced, and the IF cans have rubber coated wiring that is now crunchy and falling off. Plus the antenna needs to be rewound.
This radio, and another one like it that came from the same place, was rescued from a fella I met some 30+ years ago in West Virginia who was a tinkerer. He had an old workshop out back of his mom's house that was full of radio parts and pieces. I say parts and pieces because he didn't have much, if any, radio repair knowledge, but he sure knew how to strip them down to just pieces. I bought these two radios before he completely "disassembled" them. But he had already stripped the wire from this set's antenna and pulled its tubes. At least I did get the cardboard back and the coil form to rebuild it. The form was in three pieces but I was able to repair it.
While trying to figure out the wiring on this radio I drew a chassis layout and wiring diagram. The only part of the wiring that had me scratching my head was around the 6SA7 and 6P5 tubes. These two tubes were the only two with penciled labels on the chassis, but the wiring just didn't make sense. It turns out the handwritten labels on the chassis were reversed. After going through a bunch of Warwick schematics I finally found the 0-71 schematic that matches the circuit and my wiring diagram.
After cleaning the chassis it's looking much better. On top I removed the IF cans to clean them and replace the old disintegrating rubber-coated wiring. I also replaced the old waxed paper capacitor on the antenna coil, fixed some damaged wiring, and replaced the crunchy old grommets under the tuning "condenser". Everything on the topside is now ready for testing.

I found all the tubes in my tube stash and even found a filament ballast that I didn't know I had. The original ballast was a BK-42-K which uses a #47 dial lamp. The one I have is a BL-42-K and it uses a #44 lamp, so I changed the dial lamp to a #44.
All the bad parts under the chassis have been replaced. I cut the wires to the original electrolytic cap, but left it in place for originality. I added a terminal strip to mount the new electrolytics. The ceramic spacer on the adjustable trimmer capacitor near the 6P5 was broken so I replaced just the spacer. And all the switch contacts and the potentiometer were cleaned.

A fuse was add in the AC line and the AC input was rewired. A new polarized line cord was installed, with the line side going to the fuse first, then to the power switch, and finally to the 25Z6 rectifier tube plate. The neutral side goes directly to the circuit common.
The antenna is rewound and ready to test. I didn't have an exact turns count for the two coils on it so I need to confirm I have it right while aligning the radio.
A summary of parts replaced include all nine waxed paper capacitors, six of the seven resistors, and all the rubber-coated wire for the IF transformers, and all the old grommets in the set. A fuseholder was also added to the AC line.
More to come...
Page created 7/30/2023
Last edited 8/5/2023