A Seymour radio, another unusual set.

[boater sam]

I bought a Seymour console radio, looks as though it is a radiogram as it has a lift up top with the radio controls underneath. There is in fact a radiogram version and it looks exactly the same except the radio controls are on the front and it has a single player Garrard deck in the top. Another restoration starts here.

Took the Seymour to bits, not easy as one of the 4 wood screws in the blocks that hold the chassis had worked its way partially out preventing the chassis sliding down till the control shafts cleared the panel.

After much careful wriggling, whilst holding on to the loose glass, it slid out without breaking anything. The glass printing is very good, it just needs remounting in the tuning back plate.
Cabinet is sound, veneer bad on top, but its all there and no worm. It will refinish quite well if the workings can be saved.

Inspection reveals a replacement Radiospares universal output transformer and a cheap and nasty replacement speaker hanging loose on 2 bolts with horrible twisted together wires to extend it bunched up in the cabinet base. Phantom has been here.


Valves are 4volt Mazda octals, P41, VP41, another VP41, HL41DD, PEN45, & UU6 rectifier. So that's triode oscillator, Frequency changer, IF, detector/AVC? with triode 1st audio, tetrode output. Not my favourite valve types and a bit old for when this one was made, date codes are June 1947. These Mazdas date from 1938.
Bulbs are 6.5v 0.15a and surprisingly, as they run on 4v, both blown.
Lots of Sprague metal can caps, 1 waxy. 2 BIG carbon resistors.
Cord drive and slow motion drive are serviceable.

Wax drips from the mains transformer looks bad and testing reveals a short from the inner HT winding to the screen between the primary and secondary. The primary is still isolated.
Transformer is 280v- 0-280v, 4v@2a & 4v@5a drop through.
If there is no chance of another and a rewind is too expensive I may try isolating the transformer in the cabinet off the chassis and leave the screen floating, no earth on the core, not the best but its better than scrapping if it will run without overheating.

Any chance of finding a transformer out there?

Or turn it into mains half wave HT, non isolated chassis with big 4v transformer.

Any better ideas?

I will try to get it powered up somehow to see what else is needed, the Phantom seems not to have inflicted any mayhem on the chassis, fingers crossed.

[boater sam]

Removed the mains transformer this morning and cleaned it up. 
I think I now know why it overheated.
From manufacture the two 4 volt windings have been connected transposed, there is one @ 1.6 A for the rectifier, one side should have been  the HT take off, and the other winding is 6 A for the rest of the heaters, one side should have been grounded. They were connected to the wrong heaters! So the 5 valves  and lamps which add to 5 A were on the 1.6 A winding! Not very clever is it?

I have had the transformer running on the mains with the core earthed but screen floating for a  couple of hours without any load and it has not overheated or got any significant leakage to earth. Voltages are what would be expected. Think I may put it back in, wire it up correctly, leave the screen unconnected and see how it goes.

General standard of the wiring and component fixing is deplorable, not surprised they ceased production. A birds nest of strung up components, metal cans of capacitors with earth wires soldered to the cans, earth wires just soldered to the chassis without tags everywhere, no mechanical  joints on wires, just tagged on with solder, not pretty. Not found a single tag strip yet.
A far cry from Bush standards of wire wrapping and soldering.

[AlanBeckett]

General standard of the wiring and component fixing is deplorable, not surprised they ceased production. A birds nest of strung up components, metal cans of capacitors with earth wires soldered to the cans, earth wires just soldered to the chassis without tags everywhere, no mechanical  joints on wires, just tagged on with solder, not pretty. Not found a single tag strip yet.

What a splendid turn of phrase
Pictures?

Alan

[Murphyv310]

Hi.
I've had two Seymour Console Radios. One built in England and the other Scottish built in their Angus factory.
Build quality seems very patchy with the Ashton produced sets being a mix of good and bad workmanship. The Scottish set I had was very well made but a slightly later one (Scottish) I did as a repair was abysmal.

[Radio Fixer]

Been articles in the BVWS Bulletins about them from family members and others. Interesting but they never made anything outstanding that would interest me and no space for Consoles.

Gary

[boater sam]

                           

Refitted the mains transformer, wired it  correctly! Screen left O/C.
Run up and it works, good reception on all 3 bands so its not that bad.

Checked the audio coupling cap, only +1 volt on the output valve grid, not bad. Shorting the anode of the last IF valve put the HT up by 4 volts so changed the cap to be on the safe side. It tested out OK at low voltage on the DVM at over 200M Ohm but on the Chinese magic box it was reading 11.76nf instead of 10nf so it is probably slightly leaky. All the rest of the Sprague caps check OK on a quick test and the set is working well so time to quit looking for problems. They are 1000v rated, best bit of the set probably!

Alignment seems to be OK, leave it alone. Run for a few hours with workshop  output transformer and speaker lashed in and all seems to be good.

Will need to refit into the cabinet to check the Radiospares output transformer and speaker. In view of the lack of problems with the output valve current, it is a puzzle as to why this was changed. I think I will fit another spare transformer and save the Radiospares one as it is multi tapped and will do a push pull output too.
I will need to find one with the correct ratio if I can find out what that may be for a PEN45 valve, no doubt someone will tell me soon!

[boater sam]

Sadly this thread died before anyone found the output transformer ratio for a PEN45 valve to 3 ohm speaker.
Any takers please?

[Refugee]

7.5K
http://www.r-type.org/exhib/aaa0205.htm

[pwdrive]

It's lower than that for Class A Va = Vg2 @ 250 volts.

www.r-type.org/pdfs/pen45.pdf

7.5k might be A to A.

Lawrence.

[Terry]

Sam, when calculating the turns ratio, don't forget that it will be the square root of the impedance ratio.

I doubt that you need anything special, anyway - any transformer for a similar type of set should do.