Truetone D-696 - Detrola 175E

I fired up the radio over the weekend.  Much to my surprise, the motorized preset tuning works great.  It seems that one tube is bad but everything else seems okay.  I'll be trying to find a replacement tube shortly.  There's a bit of hum but that could be the bad tube or it could be that some capacitors need replaced.  I'll see what it's like after the tube is replaced.

Truetone D-696 - Detrola 175E

Here's a few shots of the latest cabinet refinishing work on the radio.

 

  

Truetone D-696 - Detrola 175E Updates

More pictures.  Masking off for the darker stain.

Truetone D-696 - Detrola 175E

I picked this up last week thinking I would trash it and use the tubes for another project.  Once I got it home and realized that almost all of the parts were there, I decided that I would restore it instead.  This is a Truetone Model D-696 from 1938.  The actual radio is a Detrola 175E.  Check it out... (click on any picture for a closer look)

Here's what it looked like when I got it home...

The Speaker...

The Radio chassis...

 The magic eye tube...

Here is the radio chassis out of the cabinet.  What a mess.

Here it is all cleaned up...

On to fixing up the cabinet.  After a good cleaning, I glued and clamped up the parts that were broken off.  The next day, I stripped off the old finish.

 I need to do a bit more stripping and then on to sanding.

I happened to find a small remnant of the original grill cloth.  I'll be researching and trying to find a matching replacement.

I glued up some remaining loose pieces at the end the day.  The next day, I spent more time stripping and sanding.  With a little help in the decision making from my wife, I decided to go ahead and use a little stain to even all the coloring up.  We've decided to go ahead and make the two horizontal stripes and the vertical bars in front of the speaker darker than the rest of the radio.  I'll do that tomorrow.