I honestly think this might be too far gone to get back to working condition

There have been some miraculous resurrections featured over the years in the HRSA's magazine Radio Waves and in the Vintage Radio section of Silicon Chip.

However, bringing a 'corpse' back to life does take tenacity and talent on top of a fair bit of experience and knowledge, plus often either a good junk box or the connections to source hard to find components.

Nonetheless, don't toss in the towel yet. Let's see if we can identify this one.

I assumed the speaker plug was at the back. It is likely electrodynamic and if so will have something like 2000 Ohms stamped on it. That will be the field coil resistance and another step.

The reason for the plug assumption: Only two valves are designed, not to have shields.

Photos uploaded to Post 15.

Once again: as per post #5 and #12, what we are seeking are photos of the rear and underside of the chassis.

We need to see under the radio chassis

Now we have photos (of sorts), it can be seen there are 6 valves, so it may be the same or similar to one of my wooden mysteries. That one has 57, 58, 57, 2A6, 2A5, 80 so I'd expect a very similar line-up for this radio.

Not entirely sure what the significance of the spider photo is...

What about under the chassis. Sorry this one came up twice , I wasn't being rude but I was having trouble with my tablet .

GTC and Robbert...

And that is why I can't have nice things. I mis-read your posts (I was tired is my excuse).

Hopefully photos of what you want will be attached to this post.

Big thanks to Brad for inserting the photos...

Photos uploaded to Post 23.

Wrong photos? They seem to relate to Unknown Wooden Radio #4.

They were indeed the wrong photos. It's taken more than ten years for the naming convention I use to permit a file to be over-written - amazing. Correct photos have been renamed slightly.

Okay, the very first thing that needs to be done is to cut off that mains cord. It's lethal. (Note the bayonet type plug -- power points were rare in houses back in the day so appliances were plugged into table lamps or light fittings.)

The "pan" (under chassis) itself is in very good condition, although the components themselves are not.

There is plenty of "finger room" so a restoration would not be a chore.

Also, a schematic can be fairly easily derived from the circuit layout. A fairly typical valve line-up for that era has been suggested. If it's not exactly right then it won't be far wrong.

Depending on the condition of the various transformers (power, choke, IFs) and the speaker coil that set ought to restore well.

What GTC said.

What can we see? An electro has been eaten by mice. A blue resistor has unwound itself. The mains cord is shot.

Priority number 1 - new mains cord.

Check continuity of all transformers, and the choke.

The circuit is extremely simple, so draw out the schematic based on what you can see.

Replace every capacitor, don't even bother checking the existing ones. Disconnect the chassis-mounted pair, they are worse than useless.

Check every resistor by unsoldering one end and measuring, replace if needed. Replace the blue one that unwound itself.

Once we see the schematic, we can suggest valves for you to obtain.
(Actually, it can probably be worked out from the photo).

Thanks for your encouraging words guys, perhaps it is worth restoring.

_If_ I wasn't feeling particularly confident in my restoration skills and wanted to ask some one to do it for me - do you know what sort of $ would I be looking at? (are we talking thousands? hundreds?). Please note I wouldn't be after a freebie - it would be a paid job.

I've never liked winding my my own coils/chokes and can't tune a circuit for love nor money..

That said, I'll move it into my study this evening and I will start the deciphering process over the next few days. Is there a particularity good schematic program I could use, or is 'a thumb nail dipped in tar' suitable?

Thanks again for getting me this far...

The spider is actually perceived by many as the WEB browser. It would be a wonderful idea to remember that when you fire a flashgun at a reflective surface, you may as well fire it at a mirror. in a manual camera of old or where there is an adjustment (compensator) on a new camera white wedding cakes were always about 5 stops down on the flash setting. If the flash has no diffuser, and most on board ones don't stick some white tissue over it & don't stand front on. It is pointless if we cannot read the numbers.

My normal method (as written frequently) when reverse engineering a set (and I have with an EMMCO of that era & it was in Silicon Chip). Is to use the AutoCad to place the coils & Valve sockets (already in it, or I drew & put in it) in the places they are in the set and that is predictable, then play join the dots. You draw in the components, even if you do not know the value, linking them to the valve socket pins tuning gang & the coils. Then you go back to the AutoCad & put them in. Then you end up with something you can check.

The weak link here is that a bit of knowledge of a circuit is highly desirable and the study of another autodyne circuit can help. That looks like has been messed with by some goose that was a shonk as the two big filter caps look like they are in parallel with the old "wets" and that is an absolute no no!

I would expect an RF choke between the valve used as a second detector & the output.