Delco Table Radio

Delco Radio

Now here's a great little radio. I use this radio daily to listen to several area stations. However, it has demonstrated very strong performance with even distant AM stations...including some as far away as Texas. The cabinet has been nicely designed and has a faint pattern in it.

At first this radio didn't look at all promising. It was found set out for the trash collection with a number of other radios. The cabinet was extremely dirty and covered in mildew spots. The heavy paperboard back cover was badly bowed from moisture...and the smell...this radio smelled as though it had been stored in a very damp location for a very long time. When plugged in, there was a lot of hum (indicating failed paper capacitors) but stations could be heard through the humming.

After getting it repaired, having it aligned, replacing a weak tube or two, and cleaning the cabinet, this has turned out to be a wonderful radio. It has beautiful sound quality and a tone control that lets you select from a high amount of treble or a reduced amount that's good for listening to stations with high frequency noise.

My only real complaint about this radio is the lack of strength in the dial lighting. While the dial lamp looks good and strong from the inside, it is barely visible in even the darkest room. I suppose it is possible that this radio is missing a reflector or something similar that would help the light's intensity.

As an aside, this is the first radio that I've actually had a tube fail in. It lost a 12SK7 tube, but thanks to some very kind people on the rec.antiques.radio+phono newsgroup, I've got some replacements.

This radio contains six tubes. I don't recall exactly which six it uses, but I'll get it apart sometime and post a listing of the tubes contained within.

I have the chassis for an RCA-branded radio and it is identical to this one. My guess is that the Delco name was just put on this radio and that RCA actually built it. Also, this seems to be a pretty common set. I've seen a lot of them (though none precisely like this one) with both Delco and RCA branding. I even have the chassis (and dial glass!) for a set that came in a wooden cabinet but is electrically identical to this one.

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