Amongst many other items, I have been entrusted to repair this Decca Beau from 1938, probably best described as the wireless for the lady of the house, whom does not want the 'gubbins' on show, so this is connected via an umbilical chord to the amplifier that sits out of sight, either inside a cabinet or the loudspeaker.
A lovely looking but very poorly wireless. All it does is hum and crackle. Let's take a look inside.
This was repaired many years ago and unfortunately the person undertaking the work, did not use the correct value components plus a capacitor that had exploded was not cleaned out because I found a large amount of paper and dried up electrolyte around the pins of one of the valves. There is a double capacitor that is bulging at both ends. This will be disconnected but left in site for aesthetic reasons. Surprisingly only four resistors had drifted way beyond their values but I replaced all of the leaky and incorrect value capacitors.The radio section only required a small amount of TLC and one double capacitor plus two drifted carbon composition resistors to get it going. The alignment was fine and did not need adjusting. The amplifier employs a pair of triodes, PX4 type, in push pull, producing a plentiful amount of sound.
