Reader [Jimmy] sent us some info about his recently completed antique radio to audio streamer conversion. The electronics from the original radio were too far gone to repair, but he took the time to pull apart modern components to provide a polished looking finished project without losing the antique feel. We like it, but we are just suckers for that old time look. Check out his blog for more photos.
Great work.
Two thumbs up!
Love seeing retrofitted and/or repurposed works.
that’s awesome… and he shops at the same parts house I do. I wonder if I know someone who knows him.
I had planned on converting my old philco 38-2 to house an older linksys wmls11b — i reckon i need to get off my a$$ and post up the rundown and pics of it
seems like he could tidy up the rest of the items hanging off and make a new speaker board to put the speakers on ( like the original way it was done– just my preference and not have a bunch of things stacked ontop of each other
good work though!!
i had planned to build in custom cabinets for the speakers, but i have 2 kids that require attention, my project time is very limited.
but i have a second on in the works and it will be a little cleaner, and a little smaller.
thanks for all the kind words yall.
Sweet, now all you have to do is download some old time radio mp3s from the internet archive and your set.
lol, i have about 30hrs of 1920-30’s jazz, so im all set
This is a super project, along the lines of what I’ve wanted to do.
After poking around antique radio sites regarding resto tips, here are a couple of ideas for recreating a mellow sound to complement the cabinet:
– use a tube amp, either a kit or a used hi-fi set.
– extract the speaker cones from the original enclosures and hard mount them to the radio interior. it’s thought that the harmonics of the larger enclosure emphasize the bass.
this’ll work well with jazz or pop, not so much for classical or rock.
I would be very interested in the original electronics, i.e. the chassis and parts you pulled out of the cabinet. How can I contact you?
I have a similar console radio that is not yet restored, and I can always use the parts.
I like this. Very nice work.
Excellent work, I really like this.
I trash picked an old RCA Victor console last week. Restoring it to original condition will be damned near impossible, all just to play 45s and AM radio… so I’m planning something like this.
For the AM radio half, I was thinking mp3 storage, am/fm/sat radio. Haven’t decided what to do with the turntable section….
maybe stuff an old tower in there and run old 8 & 16 bit video game emulators off it?….make a panel with all the old school controller plug ins, maybe an array of system cartridge slots?
without wrecking the way it looks on the outside, that is.
thanks for the inspiration. great post.