Newbie here. I have an Atwater Kent Model 37 radio. I'm looking for the cloth to go in the E3 or E2 speaker(don't have the speaker with me).

One of the "timing bands", for lack of correct term, that gangs all three capacitors together was broken. Have fixed that with a piece of spring steel from a small measuring tape.

Anyone know of other things to watch for before I try firing this radio up? There was a rats nest in the box. I've cleaned all that out, vacuumed real good, and made sure there was no naked wires to short out.

Any and all help aprecciated,
Bradshaw

Surprisingly, the tubes are usually good. A lot of times, these old radios are retired in working condition and the only thing wrong with them is the caps age and fail. But I like to get all the tubes too, just so I know I have good ones. I like to buy tubes from Aki at BOI Audioworks because he is an sponsor of this website and he has good deals.

I like to have a good set of tubes on hand for every radio I restore because many of them aren't made any more. So what I do is to buy one or two sets of NOS tubes and replace every capacitor and tube. They almost always work after doing that, with no other troubleshooting necessary. After the radio is working with NOS tubes, I put the original tubes back in, one at a time, to check which ones are good. I usually leave the old tubes in place if they work, and save my new tubes for spares.

Check the wiring too. If it has a cloth insulation, it is probably just fine. But if it has plastic insulation, it is probably cracking and brittle as chalk. You should replace it all. Any stranded wire will do, but I like to buy a spool of cloth wire from Antique Electronics Supply. Just take your time removing one wire at a time and replacing it with a piece of new wire. That way you won't get lost and it doesn't really take that long. These radio circuits are pretty simple.

Let us know how it goes and post photos if you can. I'd love to see your radio!

• My Tube Radios

Thanks for all the good advice. I'll start looking for the new caps to put in and see if I can find some cloth bound wire too.

This radio is in a stamped metal box for a case. Some of the paint is chipping and has rusted in places. The paint has a unique "orange peel" finish to it. Do you know of any paint that is available that will give the same finished results?

We've also got an RCA Radiola 18. Picked it up about 20 years ago on someone's trash can sitting by the road. The speaker and the cabinet were painted an aweful light "pea grean". We removed the paint to expose the beautiful walnut case and painted the speaker brown. Attached an antenna and it fired right up. Its been in the attic a good while. I think part of the tuning mechanism failed, as the knob would not tune it when I last checked.

Maybe I'll tackle that when I get the Atwater Kent going.

Once again, thanks for the help.
Bradshaw