I’ve got a Philco 46-1209 with a rather beat-up cabinet hanging around the house. It’s time to do something with it.
It’s missing the phonograph and all of its supports. I think someone scavaenged them to restore another Philco.
The knobs were missing too. I put generic replacements on it.
The finish is pretty beat-up ...
… and I put a big dent in it when I brought it home.
I’m not sure how to patch this. Cut it out, fit a wooden plug, and patch the veneer? Fill it (with what?) and patch the veneer? Fill and touch-up paint some fake woodgrain?
There’s water damage on the top, too.
And this side needs some veneer repair, too.
I replaced the electrolytics and it works, but I’ve yet to replace the paper capacitors and check the resistors. It has a fair amount of static, so either I’ve got a leaky paper cap or it has silver-mica disease.
The speaker is in good shape.
Here’s the tube complement. It has Philco’s funky paraphase push-pull output stage with a pair of 6V6’s.
So, the question is what should I do with it? I believe it is a fairly common model. Should I part it out and have a cabinet bonfire? Give it away? (Fat chance of any takers for that!) Restore it? I’ve never tried refinishing, so it would be a challenge to bring this console back, but on the other hand it would be good practice on something that’s no big loss if I screw it up.
Update:
I put up a post about the electronic restoration. I bought some Crystallac and am looking forward to stripping, sealing, grain-filling, and spraying lacquer later this summer.