[Hallicrafters] Parting out radios

[Clayton L. Nicolsen]

Good morning, gentlemen,

My first post!

I'm a boatanchor/shortwave radio collector, with a fairly wide-ranging 
interest in different brands.  In addition to a near mint SX-100 with an 
R-46B speaker, a very nice S-20R that's on my "get a round toit" list, and a 
non-working HT-37, I have:  Hammarlund HQ-145XC, 180C, 180AC, all with 
speakers, National NC-46 with speaker, NC-77X (my 1964 Xmas present from my 
folks!), NC-121, and an HRO-500.  I know, not tube, but heavy enough to 
qualify as a boatanchor!  Oh, and a BC-348.  I borrowed my uncle's in 1959, 
so I'm still reliving my childhood!

I'm also a regular on Antiqueradios.com, and the subject of parting out 
collectable radios is frequently discussed there, sometimes with more than a 
little passion.  I'm a fairly conservative guy, generally, but I'm 
definitely on the "parting out is OK" side, and here's why:

Assuming the radio is NOT a true, near one-of-a-kind rarity...

There's no doubt that our agreed-upon goal here is to rescue, and keep 
glowing, as many of these beautiful works of art as we can.  If someone has 
a radio, perhaps with a serious problem (bad power xformer, or rusted front 
panel) and decides to part it out, it may get 10 other radios up and 
running.  The tuning capacitor may go to one radio, a choke to another, a 
dial glass to another, a volume control to another...well, you get my drift. 
  5 or 10 radios fixed, instead of just one.  And, if the owner isn't 
inclined to fix it himself, or isn't willing to have it take up space in the 
basement, you know where it's going to end up.  It won't help anybody from 
the bottom of a dumpster.

Are there people who don't care about the hobby, who don't care about fixing 
up their radio, and who purely want to make the maximum profit?  Of course!  
The point is it STILL fixes up all the radios of the guys who bought each 
one of those parts!

If it IS a true, near one-of-a-kind rarity, then, of course, you should keep 
it intact.  Well, wait a minute!  I just thought of something!  Let's say 
you had TWO SX-88's.  One with a bad power transformer, one with a perfect 
power transformer.  The one with the good power transformer has a damaged 
tuning capacitor.  The one with the bad power transformer has a perfect 
tuning capacitor.  There they are, sitting side by side, both not working.

What would you do?  I'd be thinking:  "How fast can I get that soldering gun 
up to temp?!!"  I realize this isn't the ultimate "strip it to the chassis" 
parting-out scenario, but I think it makes the point.

The more radios we rescue from the dump, the more non-working radios that 
get brougth back to life, the better!

Hope my first post wasn't too long!  This is a terrific group, and I've 
already learned a lot of great info since I've started reading the new posts 
every morning.

Clay