Front view of the Pye model 15a valve radio which was in an unknown state
when a friend presented it to me for testing and reworking. It's from about
1947, as the medium wave dial has 'BBC Third' marked- the forunner of Radio 3,
and that service started in 1946. This model was replaced in 1948. I made the
legends on the knobs visible again by rubbing the letters with a white pencil.
I cleaned the dial glass and the ivory surround, but the wood case was left
pretty much as found.
Rear panels were always a bit cheap on valve radios and tellys. Note you needed
an external wire aerial strung up to receive anything at all, but a few metres
coiled up and stuffed inside the radio would work with this Pye. The 'pick-up'
sockets were the equivalent of an input for your mp3 player today, but used for a
record player pick-up instead. An external speaker could be plugged in too.
One brass thumbscrew holding the back on was missing so a new one was
turned out on the lathe, a copy of the remaining one- you can't buy such a thing.
Rear chassis view. It's a 4 valve superhet, as most domestic radios were then.
L-R these valves are- mixer/osc, IF amp, audio amp. and PSU rectifier.
Speaker wiring had disintegrated, so that is new- mainly because there
is 350 volts dc on some of these wires. The original receipt was
found alongside the chassis. Cost in about 1947 was £21-13/4d, so in 2011 that would be about £850. State of the art in 1947. Pye made good radio receivers right through their history- they were involved with radar in WWII,
and made much military radio gear. In the '50s-'70s, if a utility co. van or emergency
vehicle had a radiotelephone in it, it was probably made by Pye. I've owned a few,
and they were pretty well designed and built in the main, some could even be
described as having 'hot' receivers, even by today's standards.
Fired up on the bench. I connected the mains lightbulb jig in series with
the radio mains input to start with- so that if anything in the circuit didn't
like having power applied after many dormant years, then this would be
obvious from the bright bulb. It was ok in fact, although the mains switch
wasn't working every time to start with. I fixed this, and replaced a few
dodgy-looking capacitors inside, plus the new rear panel thumbscrew.
The radio was quite sensitive on MW, LW and shortwave bands. The large
speaker in a big wooden box meant quite a 'hifi' sound for the time.
There is a tone selection switch where we might have bass and treble
controls today. Manufacturers went wild with their own unique tone control
circuits- with greater or lesser success. The tuning control has a huge
heavy flywheel on it- this meant you could spin the dial from one end to
the other. I commandeered a Pye 15a when I was a child in the late '60s.
My interest in radio began at that point, plus I discovered what a 350 volt dc
shock felt like for the first (and not the last) time. Mmmm.....educational.