04-08-2015, 04:51 PM
(04-08-2015, 04:00 PM)Nowhere-Man Wrote: For a start, anyone seeking to repair or even restore vintage radios is doing something even the old-time repairmen didn't do. They were working with sets that, at the time, were modern ...
Two points here: the first is that anybody who did the job because they were interested in the subject would probably have encountered a wide range of vintage sets passed on by relatives and family friends while they were at school and the second is, that when I started work, not everything that passed through the workshop was by any stretch of the imagination 'modern'!
in fact, I was kept well clear of anything modern to start with - the current Bush TV models were the TV95 range but I might get near a seven year old TV24...
When the first Bush TR82 with its new-fangled transistors appeared in the workshop soon afterwards, it was promptly surrounded by the Service Manager and both Field Engineers. (It took them all morning to track the source of the low frequency instability to a flat PP9, though, and after that they lost interest!)
When I was at school, I was lucky to have Practical Wireless available and access to a very well stocked Central Junior Library nearby. The only difficulty was that, in case of difficulty, the printed page didn't answer back! Oh for a forum like this to post all the queries to with prompt intelligible replies!
You talk of books that teach repair rather than construction as being the easier choice. I'm not so sure about that as all the constructional articles and books that I remember also told you how things work - and you can't repair something without knowing the theory!
There is an alternative to that - what were known as 'Valve Jockeys' in my younger day who learned by rote that changing valve X cures symptom A but hadn't a clue as to why the replacement had a short life because of a low value bias resistor or a leaky grid couper - however, I doubt that a forum like this would interest such a person today ...
