Well I have had a fair bit of luck.

Here are four sets I have had some luck with. First is a Early Thirties Imperia what class, the second is a equally classy no name kit set. The third is a beautiful HMV 42-71 and the fourth is a magnificent Airzone A106.

The imperia cost me only $60 and the Airzone $40 with two missing knobs and the 6V6 , 5Y3 both ka putt. A friend had a trashed Airzone console to part out and guess what it had 4 knobs exact to what I needed.

Photos uploaded.

That imperia has actually got a local / distant switch on the front left. Its a set I will recap even though its from a respected seller I am thinking if it was recapped it would have been decades ago. Its a little distorted.

Lots of reasons for distortion there Carl, those anode bend detector sets were lucky if they did better than 25% THD! It's one case where I believe you can always justify a modification, that is, if you are actually going to listen to the thing!

A recap from the mid '60s on would have used polyester caps which will not need replacing.

Hey, it might have new caps inside the old casings! I do that for historically significant radios to maintain an original look.

I often wonder how many of those have, or will be, snipped out by over-zealous subsequent owners?

Ian the Imperia did get a little hot as well. I am going to pull the chassis out soon and see whats been done. A guy from Sydney sold this one to me and he is very respected as a repairer so it did surprise me. I do suspect its a capacitor problem as when I checked it this week it was still working but distorted.

This goes back to a comment I made in the las few days and regularly. Unbridled enthusiasm makes me additional money, from those who just have to plug it in to see if it works. It also sees many sets rendered commercially not viable for repair.

Inspect it & assess it, then make a move. They tend to last longer doing that.

Marc

As I have said a thousand times before. Fix it first, which by the way may include a capacitor or two.
Then, in the interests of safety, performance and reliability recap.
Unless of course the unit is past the troublesome paper cap period.
Then just replace those items known to have deteriorated due to age, or of a known bad series.
Unfortunately experience in these repairs over the period when they were sold, is hard to pass on.
Text books don’t tell you certain types/brands of resistors always go high in value and others don’t.
Same as text books don’t tell you that greenish polyester caps never fail, and waxed paper caps with two black stripes are always faulty.
Mica caps which I have always indicated as very reliable, now getting to 70 plus years old, I have found recently to be more troublesome.
In the last few weeks, have replaced at least 5 of these that were the real fault, not just random replacement.
So, I guess in the future more experience will be gained.
JJ

Ok I have pulled the chassis on the imperia. Valve lineup is 80 ,2a5, 57, 58 and 57. When I switch it on the dimbulbs come on bright. The radio works but distorted. I pull all valves and the dimbulb is still bright. I pull the speaker plug out. And dimbulbs are still bright. This tells me the transformer maybe shorted.

Will start pulling secondary wires off tomorrow. I want This set working as its nice. But may need a transformer. Why did this not blow the circuit breakers.

Why did this not blow the circuit breakers.

Depending on resistance, an internally shorted secondary does not necessary pull sufficient current in the primary to cause a fuse or breaker to blow. It may simply behave as a heating element -- until it eventually smokes up the room and/or catches fire.

I need a 2A5 for a radio here. If that Imperia's blown up...

The only reason a circuit breaker will trip is if there is an overload, or there is an earth leakage on the primary side. Any short circuit, or overload will not be seen unless it affects the primary. Seen plenty of damage caused by that scenario.

One hopes the #80 is not run sideways?

The local distance switch is there because it has no AVC. Too much signal from a close station will overload it on DX & it will distort. Do make sure #57 & #58 are in the correct hole 58 will be the mixer & #57 was reincarnated as 6U7 later on & is a cranky valve unshielded.

https://frank.pocnet.net/sheets/029/5/57.pdf This has the bias figures as a plate detector. It will distort if dud resistors throw it off.

Marcc is right that the 57 needs to be biassed correctly to function as a plate detector, or anode bend detector. Off-value resistors will affect the ideal bias and cause horrendous distortion.

BUT

Back when plate detectors were in vogue, radio transmitters of the day were rarely able to muster more than about 80% modulation. At that level, it can be shown that, correctly biassed, about 10% THD is the result. 10% was considered acceptable in the 1930s.

Ramp the modulation up to 100% (as ALL today's AM broadcast transmitters do) and you get 25% Total Harmonic Distortion.

I for one cannot listen to that much distortion for too long!

A diode detector is much better, even if it's still not perfect.

Few days ago my RCD in the box tripped on all but one power point.
So unplugged all the appliances and then plugged them back in one at a time to try and locate the item.
No luck .
It would still trip .
So I thought , perhaps it's moisture gin a point ?
So I popped the points out in the kitchen and the bathroom and had a look , hmmmm all dry !
Ok ,That's about as far as I can take it so I phoned a sparky..
But he could not get here until the next day so I lost the food in the fridge.
BTW , this happened on the day of the earthquake and I thought perhaps something moved In a junction box on a beam somewhere??.
Anyway 2 sparks turn up and tested the RCD which is now working again in on position.
They were here for a long time and never found the cause.
Now today I went to have a shower and there is not hot water! Arrr
So I checked the box and the trip switch has not gone off on any trip switches .
Time to phone the sparky again tomorrow...Pete.....

the trip switch has not gone off on any trip switches .

I don't quite follow that.

How many power circuits are there in that house? The hot water system should have its own breaker.

Are you still using an old fridge? If it has an intermittent earth leak it could be a culprit.

I guess you have ruled out neighbourhood ratbags deliberately tripping the RCDs via the test buttons?

The heater element has failed in your water heater and ruptured in the process, causing an earth leakage via the water.