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