I found this lovely old and very rare KB radio on Ebay,
I won the auction and collected it on Saturday. It is the same one in this advert from 1930.
Previous to finding this radio on Ebay I found the advert confusing as it was described as a “Transportable”, but in this case the transportable name means it can be carried from room to room and easily used because it has its own self contained loop aerial.
I now know the radio to be a KB 214, a 4 valve plus rectifier TRF radio, probably intended for the more affluent radio listener. The radio also came with its original 11 page user instruction booklet. see p.4 below.
It features a screened grid HF valve, a triode detector, triode AF valve and a Triode power output valve. It has a substantial moving coil loudspeaker (KB original) with a massive energising coil. It is described in the advert as “the tone is clear and pure, the volume loud and easily controlled”. The volume control is a 100M ohm potentiometer, I hope it still works as I dont know where I would find a replacement 100M pot.
I have had a quick look at the electrics and removed them all from the cabinet as I am currently working on the cabinet. It is rather the worst for wear from a severe worm attack.
There are 2 intervalve transformers, both seem to be open circuit, one on both primary and secondary, and the loudspeaker has a massive energising coil which also looks to be open circuit. The field energising coil is about 4 inches diameter by 3 inches height..
The output transformer primary measures just over 200 ohms, so that maybe OK.
Not checked anything in the PSU yet, all 5 valves heaters seem OK, although the OP valve is very blackened.
There are 2 small bulbs to illuminate each of the tuning dials.
The original back panels (extremely worm eaten) are present but the previous owner has made a jolly good pair of replica back panels.
The original ply power supply shelf is beyond repair and is crumbling away, dropping clouds of wood dust every time I touch it. A new ply shelf will be made to replace it.
The rest of the wood is salvageable. I have treated it for wood worm and been scraping some strange coating of the finish that someone had applied. The coating went sticky when I was cleaning with my wax polish remover. That normally doesn't happen with these cabinets, at the factory they were sprayed with a cellulose lacquer which is hard. The sticky stuff had even been painted in between the speaker fretwork cut outs so it covered the speaker cloth. On these early KB radios the speaker cloth was a very fine gold coloured silk, so the grill cloth will have to be replaced. It looks like someone wanted the cabinet to be even darker than it already was. I think the finished cabinet will be lighter, more like the image in the news paper advert, which was probably the mahogany version.
The main carcass of this cabinet has top, sides, framing, and leg frame all in solid oak and the front panel and the control panel are oak veneered ply. All are in reasonable condition with a few worm holes.
At the moment the base of the cabinet is being re-glued where it had split into 3 parts.
It looks like there will be a fair bit more to spend on the radio to have the transformers re-wound and get the radio fully working.
Mike
I won the auction and collected it on Saturday. It is the same one in this advert from 1930.
Previous to finding this radio on Ebay I found the advert confusing as it was described as a “Transportable”, but in this case the transportable name means it can be carried from room to room and easily used because it has its own self contained loop aerial.
I now know the radio to be a KB 214, a 4 valve plus rectifier TRF radio, probably intended for the more affluent radio listener. The radio also came with its original 11 page user instruction booklet. see p.4 below.
It features a screened grid HF valve, a triode detector, triode AF valve and a Triode power output valve. It has a substantial moving coil loudspeaker (KB original) with a massive energising coil. It is described in the advert as “the tone is clear and pure, the volume loud and easily controlled”. The volume control is a 100M ohm potentiometer, I hope it still works as I dont know where I would find a replacement 100M pot.
I have had a quick look at the electrics and removed them all from the cabinet as I am currently working on the cabinet. It is rather the worst for wear from a severe worm attack.
There are 2 intervalve transformers, both seem to be open circuit, one on both primary and secondary, and the loudspeaker has a massive energising coil which also looks to be open circuit. The field energising coil is about 4 inches diameter by 3 inches height..
The output transformer primary measures just over 200 ohms, so that maybe OK.
Not checked anything in the PSU yet, all 5 valves heaters seem OK, although the OP valve is very blackened.
There are 2 small bulbs to illuminate each of the tuning dials.
The original back panels (extremely worm eaten) are present but the previous owner has made a jolly good pair of replica back panels.
The original ply power supply shelf is beyond repair and is crumbling away, dropping clouds of wood dust every time I touch it. A new ply shelf will be made to replace it.
The rest of the wood is salvageable. I have treated it for wood worm and been scraping some strange coating of the finish that someone had applied. The coating went sticky when I was cleaning with my wax polish remover. That normally doesn't happen with these cabinets, at the factory they were sprayed with a cellulose lacquer which is hard. The sticky stuff had even been painted in between the speaker fretwork cut outs so it covered the speaker cloth. On these early KB radios the speaker cloth was a very fine gold coloured silk, so the grill cloth will have to be replaced. It looks like someone wanted the cabinet to be even darker than it already was. I think the finished cabinet will be lighter, more like the image in the news paper advert, which was probably the mahogany version.
The main carcass of this cabinet has top, sides, framing, and leg frame all in solid oak and the front panel and the control panel are oak veneered ply. All are in reasonable condition with a few worm holes.
At the moment the base of the cabinet is being re-glued where it had split into 3 parts.
It looks like there will be a fair bit more to spend on the radio to have the transformers re-wound and get the radio fully working.
Mike
