[NJARC] Saga of the Victor International

[VOURTSIS, PHIL, ATTSI]

   One of the more challenging radios to fix at the clinic last Saturday
was my
Victor International table radio from around 1930. The radio had already
been recappped
A few years ago but I could never get adequate volume out of it. So
first I checked the tubes,
Then I checked the B+ and changed some resistors that had changed value
and were on the high side.
Walt Heskes helped me with this and also tweaked the IFs. No
improvement. I borrowed Nick Senker's
PM speaker and jumpered it across the electromagnetic speaker on the
radio. No improvement in volume.
Then Al Klase and Gary took a look with a scope and alignment setup and
declared "This radio is deaf"!
I brought the radio back home but couldn't stop thinking about it. I
went down to my workshop and jumpered
the speaker again with a 4 ohm speaker and bingo! The volume was loud
and filled the whole room. I experimented with different speakers of
different impedance and found the lower the impedance the louder the
volume. So Nick
Your speaker must be like 16 ohms or so. I also noticed that pressing
the cone of the original speaker was met with a large amount of
resistance while that was not the case with the PM replacement speaker.
So now the radio sounds great. Thanks to all who helped out.

Phil Vourtsis
Pres.- NJARC