Using A Vintage Ammeter To Test & Repair This 1959 Westinghouse 4 Tube Radio

ladies and gentlemen this is Joe's classic video games back with another cool radio repair video for you this evening now normally we do arcade game Pinball Machine and jukebox repair videos but on the weekend sometimes on Sunday I like to work on old radios old clocks stuff like that um so today we're going to work on this little Cheapo westing house AM radio uh but also I want to see if maybe I can check out one of these amp meters Here Am meters here I've been wanting to do this basically whenever you you're working on old radios it's good to be able to see how many amps the thing is drawing because if it's if it starts drawing a lot of amps that could be a sign that there's a short in it or almost definitely a sign that there's a short in it and it can burn stuff up so um I've been uh working on them with a variac but I wanted to get an ammeter too so that I could just I could um uh check the amperage as I work on them so I I ordered a couple old ones I was going to use this Simpson and so I made an offer on it and uh the guy took my offer so I ended up buying it but at the same time I decided I want to kind of go with this one the reason I like this one is because you have a little bit of a problem whenever you're trying to get one of these to work on Old Radio the little radios like this use less than an amp this is a tube radio but it's just a little you know kitchen radio or just the cheapest possible tube radio and it it probably uses less than one amp so you kind of need a meter that can show less than an amp you know pretty accurately instead of it being down here and it's hard to read I've got paint on me um I've been painting but at the same time if you work on these bigger these old radios sometimes they'll run like 3 amps so you kind of need one that will work up to about an amp and then you kind of need one that'll work up to three or four amps you know so on this one for instance it has different settings so you can if you have it wired in series with your load to here it's going to use the scale as if it is a onea scale so if it did that you would use this 0 2 4 6 8 10 and that's how many you know hundreds of an amp or you get what I'm saying it's a 0 to 10 scale 0 to one basically and then uh you could also wire it to this one so for between here and here series and it would be 2 and 1 12 amps so then you would use the top scale or you could wire it from here to here and it would be five you get the point or 10 or I think that one's 25 okay so this one is a variable uh ammeter and the way they do it is there is a there are resistors in here I guess there's a transformer in here but essentially a resistor that divides down how much amperage actually goes through the the meter so it's something like I don't know all the math but if You' if say it's a 1 amp meter so you run one amp through it it it'll go all the way to one but if you put a resistor over here and run one amp through it since the amp since the amp of power is going through the meter and the resistor it halfs it or depending on what resistor you use it changes it and so if if uh if it was a certain number that only sent half the resistance through the meter well now it would take two amps to make the meter go all the way up because a lot of it's burning through the resistor right so they they have these ones that are set up like that this one the reason that I I decided on this one is because it's even a little more so it's got this it has a selector so you can have it on low medium high SC I think that's shunt control I think so a shunt is that resistor that you're putting in a parallel with it so if you let's say you're running the um you know radio let's say this thing's going to draw an amp and you run it through here youve got one wire coming in and then that going out in series to the radio if you also hooked up a shunt right here a resistor it would change it you know and there's a there's a mathematic formula to figure all that out I'm not going to do that but I like that it had the low medium and high that's as easy to changes that you know now who knows if it works it probably does um so the low scale would be up to 1 amp see I kind of like that 2.3.4 5 6 7 8 91 okay and then the medium would be if I'm working on something uh 0.575 1 1.25 1.5 1.75 2 2.25 2.5 so up to 2 and2 amps would be on medium and then on high uh 1 1 and 1/2 2 2 and 1/2 3 3 and 1/2 four 4 and 1/2 5 so in this one meter I can test everything from uh everything up to 5 amps and then I can also back it down to where it's only up to one amp so I think this one will actually be more useful I just bought that one because I'd already made the guy an offer on it and I thought it was [Laughter] cool made in USA by Simpson electric company Chicago Illinois back in the day boy it's beautiful isn't it got a little bit of uh area here where it got a little toasty looks like it might have got charred a little bit so it could have been that they were permanently used this to test like 25 amps and it just was running some juice through there these little things you'd think though if that was true that this one would be messed up too these little things spin out to allow you to attach a blade I guess or a wire oh yeah you just put the wire through it boy that's cool so cool all right so um this one's pretty sweet this one let's see if they're the same probably right I bet it's a standard thing no this one doesn't have the little things so this one would be more of a terminal or you could just smash the wire real good I'm sure all you Engineers would love if I did that okay so we're going to use those whenever we get up to try and out this westing house so this westing house let me show you it beautiful little simple radio cheap cheap cheap and more cheap this was probably the cheapest thing they ever made Westinghouse probably never made anything cheaper than this um so Donnie my brother Donnie if you haven't seen his channel you should he called me up and said said hey um or he texted me hey there's a radio down here you want me to buy it it was $12 and I said yeah that's cool get it so then he took it up to the cash register and the lady said did you plug it in and he said no and she said we tried to plug it in a little while ago and it didn't make any noise Donnie said oh okay and she said you better call and make sure they want it because it doesn't make any noise you know she's got basically you know acting like we're idiots and so Donnie calls me and he says hey lady said it doesn't work you still want it I said yep he said Okay click here's the back it's in very nice shape in my opinion I Can't Believe It's Not CRA well I can't believe it's barely cracked um so I think we're going to pull the whole thing off so like I said it looks pretty good it's got the um check this out it's a little 4 Tube radio says remove two screws to service printed in the USA Westinghouse Electric Corporation television radio division um apparently there was an aqua a shadow white and a carnation Pink So this must be the shadow white very good looking radio just very simple this back cover is equipped with a safety interlock to prevent dangerous electrical shock do not tamper with it or attempt to defeat its purpose to service the tubes remove the back cover completely right so the safety interlock is I think this slides on some stuff so whenever the cover comes off it unplugs it but as soon as the cover is off you can see why the radio doesn't work someone has stolen three of the tubes I would imagine that they probably got knocked around at some point and were rolling around in there they may have even been broken so somebody um you know would have pulled the broken tubes out so yeah that would be why it's not working all right so I'm trying to start a new thing this is called a couplet but I'm going to call it a coul and act like I'm better than everybody people do that to me all the time they say I don't pronounce things right so I'm just going to call this a coul look it's got a coul in it and um I'll make that my thing now this is basically an IC chip this thing was probably made early 60s if if I was just guessing 1960 or 1961 something like that and this this coup is basically some resistors and maybe a cap or two built into it um just a very cheap inexpensive radio you can see that this is a disc cap usually they don't go bad we'll hope the coup is all right we've got a filter cap here that uh possibly we can just reform and then um another disc capacitor um and we have a a little U paper cap here so just simple simple simple they had figured out how to make them Dirt Cheap by this point so let's pull out that tube and see if see how it looks and what it is so it is a westing house probably the original tube and it's a 12 av6 and if you look on the back that appears to be what it needs in that position so we're good there we're missing the other three but I hopefully have them here I was about to say I should have them but you know if I say that I won't um so let me see if I can find the other three and then we'll test them all first maybe you don't I don't think you really have to do that you could just start it up and see if they work but we'll test them just because there's not much to it and we're not going to be replacing many caps I'm looking at the schematics it's an interesting design I was just trying to figure out what that one cap is uh C5 the paper cap and it's this 047 which is kind of an across thee line cap it goes from the neutral side uh which they switch switch a lot of times on these instead of the positive side I guess it doesn't matter because it's not keyed but a lot of times they have the switch on the neutral side that something about it they thought that it would interfere with the uh sound or something cuz it's on the uh volume well I don't know so anyway you can see that the cap is tied to one side of the line here just after the switch and then it's tied to the other side but after that resistor but it's still it's across the two um across the two lines so if that cap were to short that would be really bad so I'm going to replace that one um but we're I think we may try to see if we can just save the filter capacitors one is 20 and one is 40 uh so and you can see it's such a simple little circuit it's got a 12 au6 inverter and then one if Transformer it's the typical 455 and then it's got a 12 av6 detector and first audio amp and then it just runs through a cap to couple it to the output tube so it's only got one if stage just like the simplest possible radio I don't know that it could even get any smaller than this oh and the coup the couplet has one two three resistors in it and one two 3 4 five capacitors in it so let's hope all those are fine so talk about good timing I did not plan this out but um uh I had someone contact me last week a gentleman named Ron who said that he had a bunch of vacuum tubes he wanted to send me I told him that'd be great you know I could probably use them and so I got this box in today that's full of vacuum tubes so it'll be interesting to see if it's got any of the ones that we need now the 35 W4 is very common it's in like every allamerican VI radio the 50 C5 also very common the 12 av6 was the one that was in there and the 12 I'm reading off of there the 12 au6 is also pretty common so it they might be in here I don't know we'll see so let me open it up and see what uh what all we've got so there's a bunch of them the whole box was full and they're all individually wrapped in paper and they do seem to be those little miniature ones that we need dear Ron I hope some of these tubes work for you I bought hundreds of different tubes at auction and so hopefully can sell some and make a little if you know what any might be worth send me an email sometime I have been doing a little research myself Merry Christmas to all you guys and happy New Year Ron PS I watch your brother Donnie also well thank you Ron we appreciate that I emailed him back already and um I can definitely use these I have a here in my office I have a RCA tube tester cabinet it's one of those old ones from the Department Stores um I'll do a whole video on that one of these days but so I I keep that tubes in that box and I've also got some little tube caddies um I did a video repairing one of those if you didn't see that was like one of the first amateur repair Time videos um so yeah I can definitely use them so I appreciate that now as far as the ones that are valuable I don't really know I've heard of two that are valuable basically by watching shango's channel if you don't if for those few of you that don't know about Shango um he's a really cool dude that works on a lot of vintage electronics and tons of radios tons of TVs things like that and uh quite a character very entertaining guy very good at what he does really knows his stuff um just has an interesting attitude about repairing them and uh I've seen on his Channel The Magic Eye ones are worth some money which are the ones that glow uh whenever you're basically the circuits in tune the the eye will close they're green I don't know the number of that one though I could look it up real easy but those are definitely worth money and then some of the onev tubes are worth money the ones that start with a one so if you look at one of these like let's see what this one is this is a 6 au6 so a 6 au6 is a 6volt tube that's why it starts with six and uh like the one the 35 W4 that we're looking for that starts with 35 it's a 35 volt tube so some of the ones that start with one are pretty valuable okay so let me look through these and see if any of them are any of the ones that we need and I'll let you know boy it's a whole bunch of them and about almost half of them are oh that's not the one about half of them are six a6s I'm looking for a 12 au6 this is the exact same tube but it runs off six volts instead of 12 volts so it won't work but everything else on it is the same um and then uh the only one that was a 12vt is a 12 au7 which is very useful too very common but it we don't need it in this particular situation also some of these are 61 97s which are useful in jukebox amplifiers so I'll be able to use these at work um so all of these I'll be able to use the 6vt tubes some radios use them and um they're just in all kinds of stuff so they're very useful but not the three that I need there wasn't a 35 W4 or a 50 C5 I've got those though so I found I actually found a uh it's a westing house radio so I found a Westinghouse 50 C5 if it works we'll have to test it and uh so the 35 W4 I've got one of those here and I don't have the 12 au6 which is real common you'd think that I would have that but from what I understand a 12 ba6 kind of works as a substitute it's not perfect but you can test with it right so I ordered some 12 au6 they're on the way uh by the end of the video hopefully we'll have those boy that guy better get in that truck but uh we'll test it with this 12 ba6 and see if we can get it to to work all right I've got my handy ieko wo W day model 625 out I got this from a uh there was a local gentleman named Bob who did a lot of radio repair I didn't know him but I bought all of his stuff from his son so I've got his uh tube tester and but I've got about four other tube testers too but I really like this one cuz the guy built a box for it so this is I did a whole video about that if you didn't see it go back and look on the channel there's a whole playlist of all these amateur repair time videos on on our channel uh so this is the 50 C5 usually this kind of stuff keeps working so let's see what the what the crap I had the selector not on three it was halfway between three and four that'll do it it says it's good but I didn't adjust the line actually do I need to adjust the line I probably need to adjust the line okay folks the line has been adjusted I've got it set up for the 50 C5 and let's see what we got yeah okay so it's good it's well into the good Zone let's try I've got another 50 C5 laying here let's try it too H now we have a conundrum this one also tests good but if you look the filament is just barely glowing that other one the whole freaking tube's lit up I wonder if that other one's got a short in it h so you can barely tell that one's on no glow down here but it's an RCA so I mean it's a slightly different design all right so this is the 12 av6 this is the only one that was still in it and it is weak and there's three parts to a 12 av6 and just the first test is very weak um so I'm going to swap in a new one and see if it tests better it's the same thing you can't hardly tell that the thing is on like where is the glow you can barely see it but that part of it's testing good all right so let me keep working through it all right so the new 12 av6 tested great the U 35 W4 I think this one's either all the way or nothing so it's all the way baby uh it's a new one too uh so that's three of them so I don't have the 12 au6 I ordered some so we'll test this 12 ba6 and see if we can sub it in for now all right so these 12 b6s I've got four of them and they're all the same strange brand I can't even read it um and they all test they they all seem new and they all don't test good so they all test like that they're all hitting the same spot so I don't know if it's the tube tester or what maybe that's just a slightly different version or maybe all four of them suck but we'll run with one of those since we don't have a 12 au6 yet all right so I cleaned it up a little bit popped the four in there and I changed the across the line cap that we were looking at these things they'll short and if they short you're basically connecting both sides of your line together boom [Music] fire so this one's one of the safety caps where it basically it won't it's not supposed to short it'll open up instead of shorting so that's the only cap I'm going to replace this freaking filter cap I think's got the Jive to survive I think if I slowly bring it up it'll reform and we'll see if it's got a bunch of hum we'll swap it out it should be real easy since it's on a PCB you could just take that off and then just put the two caps you know straight down in the board and just have two electrolytic caps sticking up out of the board it be real easy but we'll see if we can get it to come up and see if it's got a lot of hum or not so the first thing I'm going to do though I want to do the uh I want to use the very AC and I want to use the am meter so I'm going to take this power cord that I've had laying around an extension cord and I'm going to cut the line I don't need it anywhere near this long because I'm going to run this from this to the variac so it doesn't need to be real long um and then one of the lines in between I'm I'm going to have run through the am meter so that's my that's my plan all right folks I think I'm about ready to start now I know what you're thinking you're thinking that looks like it could catch on fire I've got a fire extinguisher handy okay that's first second this is a prototype setup you know come on I'll make it where it's safer next time we're this is proof of concept so I think think the weak point is where the wire is hanging out right there I don't know if that's in there good or not okay so uh this is actually plugged in and on but we're at zero volts right now you can hear it humming slightly there is a 2 Amp Fuse 2 and a half amp fuse in it all right so it's plugged up so it's got power into it so when I turn that up it's going to to turn up the power coming through this line uh which one side of the line is running through the ammeter and then I have the radio plugged into that running over to here so first thing I need to do you know I probably should have adjusted the zero on that first let me do that first all right so I think I've got that on zero there's actually two lines there I think you're supposed to set it on that line that's a little bit up from the zero but the problem that we've got is this is a 30 watt radio and if my math is right that means that um it's only going to draw 0.25 amps which is just going to be barely noticeable on this uh amp beater but it should still be noticeable so I'm going to turn it on and we'll see if anything crazy happens she's on but remember this is still on zero volts so we'll Turn It Up the Volume up a little bit um I have no clue if we're anywhere near a channel the tuning gang is turning just fine though okay and then I'm going to just slowly crank up the voltage and we'll see if we get any movement here I'm not going to go high though yeah we're getting some amperage did you see it move a little bit all right so we're on let's put it on like 20 volts we're on 20 volts so hopefully what's happening is it's slowly waking up this capacitor so I'm going to leave it on that for three or four minutes and then we'll turn it up a little bit more okay nothing has happened and it's still down around like zero so I'm going to crank it up to maybe like 45 volts lots of humming I don't well hav got the volume way up though yeah that's probably not going to be good so with the volume all the way down you've got that much [Music] humming yeah it's not happy with that we're at 50 [Music] volts and you can already see that the um filament is working a little bit well I don't think this is going to work we got too much hum well that cap didn't reform at all so I'm going to go ahead and swap it sucks because it's such a goodlooking cap you know but oh well what can you do it's only two caps it's a 2150 and a 4150 so I've got a 22 and a 47 okay there's been two new caps in both of the negatives go to one lead and then there were two holes one for the 22 and one for the 47 or the 20 and the 40 actually you can see this cap although it looked really good I thought the reason I wanted to leave it is cuz that thing looks brand new now you know what's going on inside doesn't really matter with how it looks but it just looks so nice I thought H let's leave it look what was under it oh oh the whole thing was falling apart underneath but I couldn't see it because it was on the bottom oh I see now so so yeah that was definitely a problem so here's the negative lead square is 40 so if you go from there to there with like a 47 which is the modern number that's near 40 and if you go from there to there with a 22 which is the modern number that's near 20 and I did 200 um just because that's what I had and I think you know it can't hurt to go a little bit higher okay um yeah so I'm going to do the same thing though I'm going to bring it up slow because this this uh there are caps in here and one of these over here is actually a cap that's a cap I think and then this is a cap you know so we're trying to just bring them up slow so we're still going to bring it up slow but we'll see if we're getting the same Buzz just right off the start okay so I think we're all still plugged in we're at zero volts power's on volume's turned up just a little bit let me go up to like 40 or 30 it went up a little bit right then went back down let's go a little higher we were already up to 50 before when we were getting the buzz so we're actually at 60 now and I'm getting nothing on this amp meter but it says at 117 volts it's 30 Watts we do have a little bit glow and I do hear some kind of amplification yeah so we don't have our Buzz now we might I doubt the oscillator is working at 50 volts but we'll try no yep so it's working at 50 volts and this thing is accurate we checked it all it's it's accurate as crap so this thing is working at 50 volts but we don't know if the amp meter is working amp meter bottle and that was Jim Johnson again oh you can see it moving with the volume Minnesota and my goodness what's storytelling here we met PS we met Donnie we met an ecosystem and we all work with people who are different all right we're going to turn the voltage up a little bit we're at maybe 0.1 something like that so let's go up to 80 24s our team away wherever you are whenever you want our goal is to get you as much as you deserve call now as the may be limited call 80062 3300 80062 3300 that's 80062 3300 call now with the holidays upon us so the purpose of this the reason I've got this isn't so that I can make sure that it's exactly at 0.25 volt um amps I'm trying to make sure that it doesn't go way up you know and start like if it pegs all the way up to one amp well this you know something's wrong this is supposed to be 0.25 amps something must be horribly shorted right so at 80 volts it sounds fine um our electrolytic caps are out I don't even know if you need to reform a disc cap a ceramic cap so let's go a little higher loal while our watch this as it goes and see if featur a user friendly design making it the perfect flip phone from now to December 16th you can score $10 off when you buy the consumer cellular Iris flip at Target making it only $39.99 visit your nearest Target okay so that's probably pretty close to the 117 that it says on the back up over2 so that's probably about right 1 grand let's see if we can get any other stations we're getting one station call 1800 life or visit.org to your appointment to give blood okay so I am getting other channels that the volume is just really low the this one is like I said it's a it's a um Clear Channel Channel very powerful at night that's late and um but remember I substituted that one um 12b A6 for a 12 Au au6 the difference between them is the um um what do they call it the uh AVC automatic volume control is that what ABC stands for basically it has to do with just that so it should be I believe lowering the volume of the really strong stations and raising the volume of the really weak stations that one that tube is designed to do that with an external circuit that remotely does it right this this circuit is so simple that it needs the 12 au6 to do it automatically right so it's working it's just not working very good because I need that correct tube all right I brought out the signal generator and I'm sending a 455 into the general area of it and I've got it about as good as it can get it's only got that one little stage I mean this just isn't a great reception radio I don't think I did swap in a 12 au6 I found one um but I'm going to mount it back in and just see if with the antenna mounted how it is if I can turn the radio to get a little better reception it could just be that the way I've got the antenna set up right now it's not that great but I think I've got it tuned about as good as I can get it with the RF adjustment I mean the if adjustment and the antenna adjustment um I don't know about tracking because I haven't put the knob back on it yet but I'm not super concerned about it I don't I think I'm only going to get a couple channels anyways all right so it doesn't get hardly anything I'm getting something at about 690 or something but I can't get WSM 650 out of Nashville which is a Clear Channel station so it's if you've got a halfway decent radio usually you can get it pretty good this one I can't hear a peep [Music] though [Music] disease patients our experienced team of nephrologists renal nurses and social workers offer chronic dialysis services in a comfortable and modern setting our experienced team that's indidual needs of patients and their families all in one location Park available let Queens Long Island Institute be there for you and your family for more information visit q.org that's q.org over the years you've brought them into your home that said is something out of New York so I don't know maybe we're all right in me I love you my come back and with that a door open just a cck enough for a small of light to come through what in the world that before try the millions of the radio and as soon as I realiz what it was now we are at about window 990 or something like that WBT is here in town it's about 4 miles from me it's uh WBT 1110 the signal is so strong on most of my radios it just overpowers everything so I don't know I might run into this over and over again but we're at 990 and I think it's already tuning in WBT and it'll tune it in all the way up to like 1,200 it's so strong I don't I don't know surely it you should be able to make it more sensitive than that but I've had about five radios that are like that so as you go in it'll get louder and louder until it's just got crazy volume because the Signal's so strong um the diameter of this thing was a couple of hundred feet it was huge so that's about dead on 1110 and as we are just standing there watching nobody thought to take a picture of this I mean the only thing we had back then was would have been a Polaroid or a brownie instatic or or something uh but we were just in awe I think it's Coast to Coast this thing um uh not making a sound so I guess that's dead hovering there and I'm going turn it all the way up just to see what kind of volume it's got man am I going to have to take a dump here I felt like you know I felt my touch moving and and it was it was before tons of volume the audible tone I could feel the vibrations of the tone that this machine was making and see there it's repeating again at like 1450 I had another one that did that too you'd think that's got to be some kind of alignment thing other [Music] said the streaming service Max announc at the final season of the so it's not super uh sensitive [Music] selective but it's working it just you know I you might be able to somebody that really knew what they were doing might be able to adjust it in a little better but I think it just wasn't designed for that I think it's just a City radio you know and uh it's not designed to um to get reception from all over the place we did get New York though didn't we somewhere is just under 309 but as Steven learned in today's episode things that are seen don't BL forever 2 Corinthians 4:18 States so I mean we're getting stuff but I think that's all she's got folks so I guess we'll leave it at that at least we fixed it and I think I learned a little something like I learned that if they look good on the top the bottom might be blown out look at that look at that all right so I'm going to put it on the Shelf I have another shelf I have to put up I'm going to put another shelf there with the smaller radios on it so I'll put this one on there and if I turn it the antenna doesn't really help 880 news you your home insurance and you know the thing where you get your hand near it and the capacitance of your hand helps the antenna it is what it is yeah so I'm going to put up another shelf and I'm going to put it up there you know and I got to put my Channel Master up there too so there you go folks I hope you enjoyed it I had a little fun doing it it's getting pretty close to Christmas so uh I'm going to have a Christmas Eve video I think next week on amateur repair time so don't make sure not to miss it and uh I hope you enjoyed it leave your comments below let me know what you think about this baby did you ever see one of these before back in the day make sure to check out my brother Donnie's Channel he's the one that found the thing for me it's not the greatest radio in the world but I knew that going in you know and you know if if I want to listen to WBT which is the local Channel pictures up I mean we got that covered the way I usually listen to WBT since it's four miles away and it's a 50,000 watt channel is I just wrap this around my finger and hold it up in the air and I can hear it in my ear usually to something and and no denying but make sure to check out Donnie's channel the link is down below the my brother Donnie channel uh Tuesday we are going to be back with our latest episode on our uh um blue skies pinball machine I'm excited about getting that one working so uh no not Tuesday Monday so Monday tomorrow tomorrow we'll see you on the blue skies video if you're into old stuff you'd probably love that old pinball machine but we'll see you back here next week where I think we might do a clock video we'll see you then hope you enjoyed it um