I guess I should start from the beginning. When I found this radio, I was initally impressed by it's unique look. It's a two tone green, the face is a "sea foam" green, the back/top/sides are dark green (plastic case). There is a "V" shaped metal panel on the right side that sits behind the controls and is there just to dress things up, basicly. The top knob is the tuner, though it looks like the cheap knob/dial combo at first, there are actually two parts, and the dial is gear reduced from the knob. There's transparent red lens behind the dial that serves as a stationary dial pointer. Mine didn't come with a light, but it looks like it was setup for one. I added one anyway, I didn't know if it was removed by someone...but there was a lot of voltage on the rectifier's tap, so some kind of load should have been there. The next thing to catch my eye was the jack on back labeled "phono" and "stereo", one label above, one below. I assumed it was a standard phono input with stereo being basicly a marketing gimic, as this set was made in the earily days of stereo. Maybe you were supposed to get two radios for stereo playback! Okay, fast foward to the present. After getting the set going again, I found that it has a nice 6" speaker and it sounds perty good, despite being a simple AA5 circuit! I also noticed that the phono jack is wired to the "other" side of the volume control, turning it clockwise turns up the radio, and turns down the phono. They are both connected all the time, with a switch on back that just shuts down the RF tubes making them silent for record play. This for the longest time seemed like the weirdest setup, I couldn't understand why you wouldn't just use the switch to select the source headed to the amp. Finally, one day, something occured to me: If the jack in back is never switched off, then it will always be tied through the volume control to the radio. The volume control would vary the signal going to the amp, but the resistance between the jack and the radio would be constant. I suspect that the jack is not only a phono in but a radio out so that the Coronado can be used as an AM tuner on a stereo amplifier! I have yet to test this out and see if it will truely work that way, but that's my best guess so far :) I'd love to hear from anyone else with one of these sets.
Again please excuse the poor pics. More glue than radio! Need a project anyone? Where do I begin....I have a Zenith that I got for free from the junk pile, all the chassis was there and most of the broken bakelite case pieces were there as well! Well, long story short, 10 years later, I had it glued, bondo-ed, and painted...and it actually is a nice working old radio. So as I drag home bakelite cased sets in various states of disrepair, I start thinking to myself "hey, I've fixed that Zenith, there's no reason I couldn't do the same with one of these"....but reality kicked in and I realized I'd have a $10 AA5 radio that I didn't care for much after all my time and work. To get to the point, I ended up with the Philco as I thought it was a set that would actually be cool to have once I was done. If I get done....it's really a basket case! (literally). I do have the (seperate) grill and chassis hardware to make a whole radio once the case is done. I had to get some photos before I got too far along (took it apart and cleaned it first). Here's what the radio was supposed to look like:
Not a whole lot to say about this radio. It probably looks a little weird because the chassis is just sitting loose inside. It's an RCA 5T series set, but I'm not sure of the model number exactly, so if anybody knows, please let me know. So far the radio seems to be working okay as-is. It's had some of the really old caps replaced with just old caps :) I'll probably replace them with new caps before really running the set, so far I've only run it at low voltage.