Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Atwater Kent Model 10C

Sorry, this is not a post on the house progress. I am pretty much done with my hiatus though and will be getting back to work very soon.

This post is about an old radio that I just bought. It is so cool that I just had to share it here.

Here is how I found it at an antique mall:


I'd never seen anything like it and was immediately interested. It turns out that they are quite rare.

It's an Atwater Kent Model 10C radio in a Pooley cabinet from 1924. This was very early in the history of the radio era, the first radio station started broadcasting in 1920.

The radio is tuned by all three dials, the knob in between the first and second stage controls the volume. The knob on the right below the tubes also controls the volume somewhat. Not sure what the knob on the first RF coil on the left controls.
 
After bringing it home I started cleaning it.

Here is a picture of the radio removed from the cabinet:







As you can see it's quite dirty. The radio by itself is called a breadboard by the way.

Here is the radio after a bit of cleaning:




The cabinet needs a lot of work, I'm going to have to remove and replace a lot of veneer and refinish the entire cabinet.

I cleaned the radio with a damp cloth but it still needs a lot more cleaning and I'd really like to get it working. It's missing 3 vacuum tubes which aren't cheap. I've found a few sets on E-bay but they run about $250 for the whole set of 5.

I'll take more pictures once I have restored it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I know nothing about old radios, but this site has several links for vacuum tube suppliers; might be cheaper than ebay.

http://www.antiqueairwaves.com/

Amanda said...

That is a very cool find. :)

Kathy said...

That is a beautiful radio! So much better to look at than an iPod. Can't wait to see your progress!
Kathy

Mike said...

Wow, you did good for a radio find! These early tubes are pricey and you will need to test the ones you have too. This is a battery powered set, so you will also need to find a power supply to run it. There are a few out there that supply all the voltages needed for these sets. AC powered sets came out about 1927. I probably have schematics for this set if you need them.