A Bunch of Old Radio Stuff From A Repairman Who Passed Away Testing His Variac & Meter, Shack Tour

ladies and gentlemen this is Joe's classic video games back with another cool varc repair video for you this evening uh this video usually we do arcade game Pinball Machine and jukebox repair videos we are not going to be doing that tonight I am here in my office um and I've got this old varac that I'm going to open up and see what is in it I I uh have a whole bunch of radios I'm going to be repairing and I want to kind of get into that hobby a little bit and so uh I might need to use this now this thing is old so it may not work for my purposes but it's kind of cool and I want to look inside of it and then I want to test it and see if it works so um we'll take a quick look at it but I want to tell you where I got it too I need to put down something so I don't scratch up my desk I need to get a I've been looking to get like one of those old school ink blads like a green one or something you know those cool ink blads to put in here um look at this thing it's ancient you can run two amps through it it says made in the United States verran you United Transformer Company New York New York the knob is the shaft I guess of the knob is bent a little bit or it may just be the knob I don't know but what would be more fun than plugging this thing up and seeing if any of this uh see if it actually is accurate um got an old fuse here on the front in and out and then a plug but I'm thinking you can probably plug something into that cuz we've got a our plug for this old school people old school so let me tell you about Old School uh a gentleman that Donnie works with um last year his father passed away and his father um was really into radios he loved working on radios um and had a bunch of radio equipment test equipment and radios and parts and tubes and stuff like that and so when the family was going through his belongings um his son was asking Donnie if he knew anybody that was into old radios and I am right I picked these things up all over the place I got a bunch of them I got crap everywhere but um um I've worked you know I've messed with a few of them and usually I do pinball repairs and arcade game repairs and stuff like that but we do some Juke boxes too which you know have some similarities to radios they just don't have the basically the the RF and the if and all of that but they have the amp right um so uh you know I'm interested in those and I had a bunch of tubes and stuff because I use them in tube amp repairs and stuff and I've done a little bit of that stuff I'm no expert on it by any means but um and I had a bunch of old radios and stuff so I told him yeah man I'd be interested in that stuff so I went over to his house and uh he had a room in his house that was set up as his shop where he worked on old radios and stuff and um some newer stuff too he had he had some uh just you know newer CD players and stuff like that and a bunch of car radios and stuff like that and he had a whole ton of vacuum tubes and uh he had a couple testers and um he had a couple U the repair man boxes what do they call totes caddies tube caddies and stuff like that and so I was like man yeah I'd definitely be interested in that and sitting on the wall among other things was this varc and um yeah you know I'd be interested in all that so I made him an offer on it and um they accepted my offer and so I went over and I picked all that stuff up and it was a whole truckload of stuff and this was sitting on the shelf so I don't know if he ever used this or I mean I would assume he did I didn't find another one in there and I think pretty much most of his test equipment was in there I didn't see another one so maybe this was the one that he used all the time I don't know he he had been going through some health issues for a while so I don't know how long it had been since he had been working on any of these so this may have been sitting around for a while um but I want to show you something I've got one of his business cards here from back in the day that was just in with a lot of the stuff so uh Bob and then that's his last name underneath the guitar pick there I'm trying not to dox anybody so this is an old school business card he had Bob uh we'll just say uh Miller Bob Miller that's not his name I'm just making it up Bob Miller collector it says antique radios vintage TVs buy sell s trade repair parts tubes Charlotte North Carolina so I can just see him going out to like ham Fest and stuff you know and handing these uh handing these out to people hey I'm a collector so uh his son uh told us that he at one time he turned their house into a um you know as a kid he would Tinker with his dad with these radios and he said that he turned their house into a radio station and he they drove up the road and they they could get up U about half a mile away before it faded out or something like that so I'm sure he had some kind of you know um signal generator pumping out some amps there for you know or or maybe just had something playing on a I don't know I don't know how he did it but um but pretty cool so this is you know to remember Bob by right he he was a collector and we got I got a lot of his stuff here and I'm going to take care of it and uh I think it would be neat to see if this thing works and if it works good enough I'll use it whenever I fix stuff I like older vintage stuff I like you know if you get something this there's not much to a varat you wouldn't think right but um I'm sure there's just a big Transformer in there and a big potentiometer uh or riat I think it would be called well amps I guess that could be a pot anyway I don't know what I'm doing people I'm an amateur but uh I think you know some some of this stuff you you know you kind of need to use more modern equipment you know but eh I'm just messing around you know I'm just a hobbyist kind of tinkering with it I think this would probably work for me so I think we need to open it up and see what it looks like inside look at the nice vents for heat dissipation look at that and it says I guess that says protect maybe it would have said protect your instruments protect your investment Maybe protect your important kind of looks like an M doesn't it I don't know well I don't know if I need to take that Knob Off to take the case apart I'm going to go with no I do not so let me get a Phillips screwdriver and I'll take these screws out so I took the eight screws out and it looks like the whole Bottom's going to come off and the sides I need to get a tripod make it a little easier for me to film this kind of stuff very cool aha boy that's a big hunk of Transformer ain't it wow well I bet that thing's going to so cord comes in has a knot tied in it cord is in nice shape I don't have any problem with cord and by the way people if you haven't watched my arcade game Pinball Machine and jukebox videos I am not a perfectionist you're not going to see me do this the perfect way and I don't know what I'm doing so I know it's dangerous ooh look how they did that why in the world am I looking at I've never seen anything like that I'll try to get a better shot or get some light in there maybe if I turn it whoa yeah it's like it's running on a track or something oh the whole thing moves so yeah I got to get some light on it oh okay so it must it's rubbing on something up there so that's to one extreme and that's to The Other Extreme well folks this all looks just fine to me let's see if we can look up in there with some light maybe maybe we need some contact cleaner on it what do you think need the light to cooperate is what we need move my lamp over here oh yeah there we go now the videoos worth the price of admission wow it's just riding on the is so cool they've just got them arranged how is it doing that if those are insulated though so is it conducting through the uh through the V what what what is that coated in right I mean that's nothing that's just the uh that's just the the coating on the uh the wire does it just conduct through that that is cool so that wheel [Music] thing it's like it just kind of short circuits it but it's not I mean I don't think it's damaging the wire or anything okay look how it's spinning too so it spins but then it's catching I bet this thing's gonna have problems I don't know if you run a couple amps through it though it might but on a radio it might not use a couple amps what do you think clean it up and give it a try that's what I think I think we clean it up up and we give it her a try all right so um there's a fuse what the hell yeah better inspect that a little better before we juice her up oh the in and out is useless it it's not hooked up so those I was wondering about that so those holes there the input output whatever all of that's been removed whatever it was I wonder if those were little lights or something I don't know you know what I could do is try to find a picture of one online but why would I do that folks it's more fun to just mess around with it and see what you can figure out all right so I need a meter something to test it if we've got the guts to plug her up let me see if I've got a meter here at the house all right so here's the problem I see you plug the whatever into here but these are like you know come on man they don't they won't touch but you know I mean you know they won't pop all the way out so we don't have that problem but here's our here's our Jack look at that now they won't come out like it'll do that but it won't come out the back so I don't know of course that's not going to be reliable long term but I'm just wondering if we can test it I think we can test it but I need to find what that would be called I could replace that with a modern one you know from China I could get one from China and pollute this thing if I could find so that would be a panel Mount AC outlet right so if I was to Google or go on the ebays and say panel Mount AC outlet maybe a maybe throw a AC terminal in there panel out panel Mount AC terminal maybe I might find something that would fit in there right and if it was close we could just do what we needed to do with the screws and then uh resolder the back end so maybe we'll do that before we use it but I think I could test it the way it is let me let me see about a multimeter so I was looking to see if I had a multimeter here at the house do not that I can find at least I've got a couple old flukes um but they're at work so I started thinking man I thought for sure I had a multimeter around here but then I remembered I've got Bob stuff now people if I passed away I would hope that somebody would take all my stuff and get some use out of it so I bet he would be thrilled somebody's going to try to use his meter or one of his meters um um so this is an old Radio Shack meter check this out Myron hopefully we don't fry it custom manufactured in China ah Bob H what are you doing to us a division of Tandy Fort Worth Texas pretty cool well it's China well there that went but it's all we got right now so let's see what this sucker's got DC AC okay off battery check on one does it still have a battery in it yes it does battery okay Bob your battery is still good buddy and in a box I found these which may be the correct leads let's hook them up this one has a zero adjustment I've never seen that it's a little touchy it's precise people all right here goes nothing hope we don't wrong way hope we don't fry his meter probes don't want to stick in the wall are we frying as meter we are not frying as meter okay so I've got it on [Music] 300 I'm used to a digital one uh that's 123 or so wouldn't it be got it on 300 I think we're at about 123 volts coming out of the wall which is about dead on what's actually coming out of the wall I think the zero must have been pretty close H oh you know I didn't think about that if I set it on a smaller um if I set it on like that it would be less touchy when you zero it in probably well well I think it works pretty good actually let's see well continuity let's see if the continuity beeper beeps although we don't really need that yeah huh meter works fine well I guess we're going to plug in the varer I checked it's got a 10 amp fuse in it and the wall has a 15 amp uh breaker in it and I've got I've got the fire extinguisher what do you think 10 volts I've got it set on 100 and I'll be darn if that's not dead on or pretty close 10 volts okay 20 30 before I'm a little high 50 6 it's pretty cool and then it's kind of weird how they do the oh remember it it so the 65 is down here because that's the place where it's between the two plates so that's 65 but it really put us up to about 70 okay now we're over on 70 but really we're about 75 80 but we're pushing 90 90 we're at 95 and 100 we've pegged it so let's bump up to our 300 so I'm supposed to be at 100 I'm at 110 so that's 110 or a little over 120 that's 12 20 we're at 130 and then if I go up to 130 so we're pegged we're at 140 but I got to say the thing works perfect I mean it's working absolutely perfect right but since it's just AC and there's no rectifier or anything or anything like that going on and um well there's no load but I don't think I would change it but it's cuz my wall voltage is higher back when they made this you were probably supposed to run on 110 or 115 yeah 115 so you're supposed to run it at 115 and I think I'm more like 125 um I can tell you actually let me unplug this thing since it's done its [Music] thing let me do that with two hands okay so I didn't touch the meter I just unplugged it from the uh very Transformer very TR and plugged it into the uh outlet and yes I mean look that's probably according to this at least that's 126 or so so U you know it could be that I don't have the thing zeroed properly but uh if I'm you know I was what about 10 high whenever I got up to the higher U measurements one like 110 120 I was about 10 high so that would make sense cuz my voltage is like 10 or 11 High coming out of the wall so what have we learned the varc works perfect did you see how smooth it went too no problems I guess the way that thing's designed must just be reliable as crap reliable as heck right and his old Tandy microna meter appears to work perfect that's cool man all right all right so I uh I need to clean this up a little bit and I want to see about if I can find that so I'm going to look this up and see what the in out we're unplugged by the way so I can see what the in out thing was supposed to be for originally and then um I want to see if I can find a panel Mount AC plug surely they still make those so let me see what I can find about them so looking on eBay it looks like there were a ton of different variations um and on some of them you would just hook it up with little terminals on the front mine's been either modified or well I'm sure it's been modified but this one didn't have the AC connection so what they probably did was they just disconnected this on mine and added the AC thing terminal panel Mount thingy Mig wouldn't it be cool though to like replace that with a switch if I could put a switch in there somehow it's a weird size I don't know if I can put a switch in there somehow um that might be cool all right here's a catalog from UTC from 19 1953 where they show what they have and the one the vo one there is the two amp one which appears to be the one that I've got but it doesn't have that outlet uh that's been I guess hacked into mine I I bet it wasn't original um so this is in 1953 so there's another catalog from 1963 and in 1963 it appears that it had been discontinued because they had a nicer one so these are all five amp and some of them even have a meter in it so that's pretty cool so it's probably from the mid to late 50s and somebody has hacked that little plugin which I like better than the terminals so I'm going to hack a better one in I got a check the how the fuse is too people online are saying that the fuse should be on the outside the output of the Transformer which makes a lot of sense to me so I might have to change how that's wired I don't know I'll I can't remember how they had it going I I have to look at it again but we'll see well after I took the old plug out it became obvious that it had been added see how the case is kind of hacked up so clearly that was added in and the two wires on the back of it were round so they had been on wherever the two posts were I guess there's a third post but um so I ordered a a little AC plug receptacle Outlet whatever uh but guess what the whole spacing was slightly different it was the same body size but the spacing on the holes was slightly different so I chipped it had a little boo boo but it's just on the plastic on the ear there it's all right don't worry about it we've got good prongs now at least right if I hadn't tied up the wi so pretty I'd plug it into itself we could check it out yeah let's do that who knows maybe that'll can it work like I don't think you can you can plug a barister into itself right well the good news is it it's not a not a light fit you got to force it a little bit it's in there the hell what in the world what the hell has some kind of lock on the plug I don't know people this is a weird one it's patent pending all right well I think a normal thing will'll plug in there now I think we're good you know come on we're not going to use this on everything but every once in a while I'll probably need it for something uh I was thinking you could take this out and put like a little voltmeter in there but it probably since this seemed to be pretty accurate I think maybe a like a amp meter might be better to show you how many amps it's pulling right the other thing is since this is the two amp model you know you that'd probably be good to have a little amp meter because you're going to have to hook one up to it anyway if you're doing radio repair but I think I can use this on a few things right so it'll be cool to have at least a verran if I find myself needing one so I like it I think it's very usable we tested it everything seems cool I think uh I think I'll add that to my repair tool collection and then if I get better at it where I know what I'm doing I might build a box or something um with that and a dim bulb tester and and an amp meter and a volt meter and stuff like that all in it it'd be kind of cool to have a something with all of that in one thing and you could turn different things on and off you know kind of like a like a music mixing board or something but this will be a nice little tool I can use on some things so I like it and I think Mr Bob um was would probably be happy that somebody's going to get a little bit of use out of one of his tools and his and his uh meter as well now since you waited all the way to the end like this I'll tell you what I'm going to do when I was at Bob's little shop after he had passed away in his house like his little shop in his house I took some pictures and I took a short little video so I'm going to show you how his little thing was set up just so we can uh uh remember the old timers that came before us I don't know what I'm doing he probably knew a little more about it than I do but um you can see just how he had stuff in his shop and I always thought it was kind of neat to see how other people's shops are and just you know what's important to them and what what did they hang on the wall and what what all is in there right so uh I'll show you his shop you might see this and this in there there's one video uh that I I think I've got still got a copy of that that goes real fast I'll slow it down so that you we can see this stuff a little bit better and uh we'll just leave on that note and remember him so uh if you like the video make sure to subscribe uh leave your comments down below and of course usually I do arcade game Pinball and jukebox videos I'll be back with one of those in a couple days so uh we'll see you on the next one I hope you enjoyed Tinker out around with it we didn't really do anything but it's just kind of neat to look over a couple old pieces of equipment that I got off somebody and uh here's here's uh what Bob had going [Music] on [Music] for [Music] for