Zenith 6S632 Wood Tabletop Radio with Black Dial (1942)


Zenith 6S632 Tabletop w/Black Dial (1942)

This is the first antique radio I ever bought, and the one that first got me interested in collecting. Believe it or not, I got this at a yard sale, for $3.00. Yes, I said three whole dollars! After I decided to try to restore the electronics, I found out that the main transformer had melted its tar out. The tar had run down with the wires, under the metal chassis, where it encased quite a few of the components in a fist-sized mass of tar, which then re-solidified. Ever-persistent, I chiseled the tar out with a hammer and screwdriver. After destroying a couple of the entombed resistors, I needed a schematic diagram of the circuit, to identify their values for replacement. That's when/why I learned that one can have schematics emailed to oneself, within hours, for just a few bucks. What a world!

After replacing all of the old paper and electrolytic capacitors with modern ones, and replacing a few broken resistors, and the dial lamps, all I needed was a replacement transformer. Buying one would have been a little expensive (about fifteen times what I paid for the radio). Luckily, the kind folks on the rec.antiques.radio+phono newsgroup were patient enough to teach me how to tell if one of the old transformers I'd been ripping out of old (free) tube TVs would work as a substitute. I found that I already had one that would work! It was a little larger than the original, and had to be mounted at a slight angle to fit, but the radio now works perfectly, for both AM and shortwave reception. Actually, they say restored radios work BETTER than new, since our modern capacitors are better than the old ones. And there's no denying that tubes produce a different sound than transistors. I find it to be somehow warmer, fuller, richer, fatter. i.e. better. Maybe I'm biased. (Or maybe I'm just dreaming about food and prosperity?)


Back to Tom's Antique Radios Page