Resto-mod speaker

redbeard23 · January 7

Doesn't seem like something common here but...

I found this classic radio in a 1970s house I bought, mice ate the guts, I'd like to get it back to working, make it Bluetooth, but I want it to have that classic warm mono sound.

Anyone know what parts I would need to build the internals. I'd like to use the original front knobs at least some, to have an on/off knob and volume knob, maybe a dimmer knob for some orange lights behind the cloth front.

And don't worry, I'm not gonna cover that beautiful original wood

manikyath · January 7

39 minutes ago, redbeard23 said:

but I want it to have that classic warm mono sound.

if you cant get the original amplifier to come back to life, you arent gonna be getting warm sound (unless you find someone who's actually building amplifiers with the appropriate tuning..)

Needfuldoer · January 7

If you don't want to go all-in building an LM324-based amplifier, an amp like this would be far more than you'd need to drive the speaker:

https://www.amazon.com/Kinter-K3118-Instruments-Digital-Amplifier/dp/B0787BRQ2F

38 minutes ago, manikyath said:

if you cant get the original amplifier to come back to life, you arent gonna be getting warm sound (unless you find someone who's actually building amplifiers with the appropriate tuning..)

You could probably get close with a carefully tweaked EQ. (Especially if it's still driving the original speaker.) Kill the very lows and highs, boost the mids. I think AM radio is generally limited to between 50hz and 5khz.

But yeah, if you can get the original chassis going again, the best way to pipe audio into it would be an AM transmitter kit. Doesn't get much more original than that!

Heats with Nvidia · January 8

What do th internals look like? Usually mice don`t eat metal, glass and plastic, which is, what the internals should mostly be composed of. Maybe they ate some of the wires.

redbeard23 · January 10

On 1/7/2024 at 7:35 PM, Heats with Nvidia said:

What do th internals look like? Usually mice don`t eat metal, glass and plastic, which is, what the internals should mostly be composed of. Maybe they ate some of the wires.

I haven't dug into it yet, the entire house was in poor condition, everything original from the 1970s (including the stack of vintage 18+ vhs boxed up in the basement) so it's possible it'll work with rewiring I'm just getting ideas as a back up. I know it'll need at least wiring and a speaker, unless I can replace the foam on the original