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Zoeken:

How did you get it and what is it?

As you can read on another part of this website, one of my hobbies is Scouting. Scouting has a world-wide event called JOTA (Jamboree On The Air), this event has the goal of bringing together scouts from the whole world by means of radios. An older man came walking by us and started a little chat. In the end he offered us this radio.

The radio is in a terrible shape as you can see on the pictures below.

After searching the internet for some more details/schematics I discovered that there were actually made 6 versions of this radio. S-38(no letter) till S-38E. The only radio that had six tubes like this one is the version with no letter. This means that our little radio is from 1946!

What are you going to do on it?

There are a couple of things that need to be done before the radio can be operated safely. These are:

• Replacing all the paper capacitors with modern ones.
• Place the on-off switch in the hot line. Now the whole chassis comes under current when the radio is turned off.
• The radio is converted to 230V (European) by means of an old TL-transformer. It works but I think it will be safer (and nicer to look at) to use an dedicated transformer.

Furthermore there are some cosmetic things I would like to address. The case is an terrible Red color. This needs to go and painted over with a nice black finish. The back and bottom covers are missing so these will be ordered from the states, where the transfers will come from also. Another thing that need to be addressed is that the speaker doesn’t work correctly. It might need to be replaced but that’s for later concerns.

Some other thing is that the original knobs are missing (one of the replacement knobs is missing to) . If you come across this page and know where I can get them, please let me know trough the contact form!

Roughly cleaning it up

The first step in bringing this radio back to her original shape is opening it up and have a look inside. This to verify that we really have a six tube version but also to look what the shape is inside… Well that’s not too bad, only a lot of dirt, nothing a bit of air can’t clean out. See the pics below for the before and after shots.

After the cleanup it became clear somebody already had a go on fixing this radio. The wires to the speakers were cut and re-soldered and some tubes were changed for more modern ones. Why I think that? Because some tubes are from POPE (Productie Overschot Philips Eindhoven) and are from a much later date than the radio.

Now that it is clear in what kind of state the radio it is, it is time to restaurate it.

Replacing the capacitors and rewiring

To start the restoration of this radio I started with replacing all the old paper capacitors and replacing the wire by a modern version (all the old wires had cotton insulation). The result is visible in the pictures below.

After the rewiring I discovered that a wire is lose and I can’t figure out what is it supposed to be connected to. I think it could be OK that it is lose because it is twisted around another wire. If anybody has a clue about this, please let me know.. (it’s the wire from the 12SQ7GT Beat Frequency Oscillator Pin2 to C25 in the schematics, C25 is the capacitor that has the description: 2mmf Twisted Insul. Wire Leads).

I had some time to do a bit of work on the radio yesterday and today. I first started to do some work on the insulators that are placed between the little holdings for the switches at the front and the main frame. This insulation is very important to make sure there is no 110Volts on the outside of the radio. These insulators are made on the late.

After this some more work is done on the wiring. The last wire to the speaker was soldered so the top of the radio now looks like this
Now it was time to replace the wires of the indication light, but when I replaced the two wires on the lamp side I came to the conclusion I made a really rooky mistake. Forgot to write down where the wires are supposed to go to. Time to look at the photo’s I made before I started this project. I now had a good general idea about where the wires were supposed to go so looked up the pinout of the tube. There I found that pin 2 and 3 were used for an indicator light. The schematics were at hand to so a quick check there confirmed my suspicion.
After this almost all the wiring is done. I ordered an 65VA Galvanic isolation transformer and a resistor from a big electro company and waiting for these parts to arrive, after that, when I connect it all up, it should work, so exciting times are coming (or some magical blue smoke escapes and it is all over *hope not* )

Last week the last electronic components came in from “Conrad” so the last things are now done on the electronics. The speaker is re-soldered, there is a 220 to 110 Volts Galvanic Isolated transformer installed and all the tubes are back in. The first picture is the transformer in its housing (made from an old box laying around) and the second picture is of the radio in operation.

The radio is working again!! However, I can only receive something on the last band, I think this is a bit weird but it could be possible this is the only band in use, will have to look into that more closely. Now I know the radio still works it is time to start to do some work on the cosmetics.

Today it was a nice spring day, actually the first warm day of the year, so I decided it was a nice opportunity to work a bit more on the Hallicrafters. Since the radio is now in a working condition (as far as the electronics go) I started to work on the casing. I chemically stripped the paint. The result is shown below.

Yesterday the mailman came and brought me a little package. It were the decals for the hallicrafters casing.

Please visit this page again to see the progress of this little radio.

Some interesting sites about the Hallicrafters S-38

http://www.w9wze.org/ : The Hallicrafters Web Site
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~postr/bapix/S38.htm : Some pictures
http://www.schmitzhouse.com/Johns_Electronics_08.htm : An other restauration project
http://www.the-s38-guy.com/ : The S-38 Guy, a lot of tips!
http://www.radiodaze.com/reprodecals-H-Z.htm : Decals for the S-38
http://www.stanwatkins.com/hals38.htm : An other restauration project
http://www.retro-tronics.com/itemDetails.php?shortDesc=Hallicrafters+S-38+Cover+Kit : back and bottom plate for the S-38
http://www.imagenisp.ca/jsm/s38.html : An other restauration project
http://www.antiqueradioknobs.com/ :Antique Radio Knobs

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