CLOUD3

1940's HMV

I had a call one day from a friend to say he had bought a great little set for me to restore. He had also picked up the next day another of the exact type to use for spares. The following week he brought them round, a few pounds exchanged hands, then I was the proud owner of two filthy and very sad looking 1940's HMVs. My wife glanced at them and said "I think you've met your match there!"

The next day dawned and I made a start. The first thing I realised was that it was a good job that I had the one for spares as the wood on the better one was missing some veneer and beyond repair. I stripped the two of them and selected the best bits from both. Next on the list was to get the chassis working. The set is AC/DC and as usual the ballast resistor was open circuit. This was soon replaced with a nice large ceramic unit. Now at least all the valve heaters came on, along with a very loud mains hum. Yes, one smoothing capacitor was open circuit. Set now working but it sounds like Des O'Connor on a bad day! One or two capacitors were looking hot and bothered, so all audio coupling and decoupling caps are replaced and now it really sounds quite good. Just as I am tuning up the band - PING! - drive cord snaps. I now enlist the help of my son, who remarks "why can't I have a normal dad who watches football and drinks lager!" Anyway after two attempts we got it sorted and all is well.

Next job is to remove and respray the bakelite front panel. This is done with a Fiat car spray in cream (can I just add that none of us has ever owned a cream Fiat!) New speaker cloth is fitted and the dial is cleaned, things are really taking shape now. The cabinet sides are treated with scratch cover polish on fine grade steel wool followed by brown boot pollish. This worked very well and gave a very pleasing result. The top was very bad so this was stripped with Nitromors, stained and finished with an acrilic laquor. The set was reassembled, a new mains lead fitted and as you can see from the photo looks very well.

The set performs rather better than most small receivers partly because it has a push-pull output stage, very unusual in such a small set. The little rascal now sits on a table in the lounge along with many other radios mainly dating from the golden age, the 1930's. It always gives me a real thrill to hear a set work again after years of silence and decay. My long suffering wife is never quite sure what she will find in the lounge when she returns from shopping! I keep telling her that one day they will be worth a fortune and I will be able to sell them and take her on a cruise. Why don't I think she believes me?

Full restoration picture gallery


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