Philco 42-327T: Closure

It's been a couple of busy months, but the old Philco is done.  Once I repaired the damage I inflicted on it by foolishly lifting the cabinet by one of the grille bars, everything went together rather smoothly and it turned out quite nice.

I don't think I mentioned the chassis in any of my earlier posts, but it's rehab was relatively uneventful, mainly because nobody'd tried to fix it before I got my meat hooks on it.  So, it was simply a matter of replacing the electrolytic and paper caps, cleaning and lubricating the controls and tube sockets, and a final touch-up on the alignment.  The only thing that put up any sort of fight was the pushbutton presets, but that was just because they were full of crud and took some extra cleaning before they worked reliably and noise-free.

Performance wise, it's competent but not spectacular, as one would expect from a mid-low end radio.  The internal loop antenna works OK for the local stations, but it really comes alive when connected to an outdoor wire antenna, particularly on the shortwave bands. 

So, was it worth the effort?  Probably not from the financial perspective, though I don't have but maybe $50 invested in the thing and shouldn't have much trouble breaking even.  From the standpoint of personal entertainment, though, it was more than worth it.  Breathing life into a radio that's been neglected and dormant for decades is almost as much fun as building one from scratch!