We’ve all done it. We spy an old radio at a garage sale or resale shop. We know someone should bring it back to life, but it looks like a project, so we pass it by. Not [Ken] from [Ken’s Shop]. He found an Arvin 664A AM radio from 1947 in what appears to be a home-built cabinet and decided to bring it back to life.

From what we could find, the original case was a white plastic, not the wood box it is in today. So the first challenge was simply getting inside to see what was going on.

Inside is a pretty standard lineup of six tubes and a few transformers. There were obvious signs that someone had already been in there, as there were some new capacitors grafted in.

What follows is the kind of troubleshooting you have to do when you are working with an old, unloved radio. Getting it powered up was most of the battle and required replacing all the old capacitors.

The radio actually sounded good once it was working. With the box cleaned up, a new speaker grille, and a new window for the tuning dial, the radio looks — well — at least better than it did. A unique radio, for sure.

We love these old radio restorations. Want to get started on your own restorations? We can help with that.