So good to see vintage gear restored and made new again. That takes patience and great dedication. Kudos to you Mike and the fellow who did not spare a thing creating this restoration.
Well done Mike, it's always nice to help out a fellow him or shortwave listener. Thanks for pointing out the ground issues. You sir have good troubleshooting skills, great video thank you. P.S. I have to revisit your excellent digital TV series a few times in hope it sinks in.
Loved this video, Mike! I think it was great of you to help the guy! My experience is getting two AA5's working and two I couldn't so I could relate to him and his frustration.
This was my first receiver as a Novice back in the early '70s. Picked it up in a pawn shop when I was in the Army at Ft. Hood. Coupled with a Johnson Challenger I was able to make a few contacts on the weekends. Outside antennas were not permitted so we took the army bedsprings and hooked the coax up to a pair of them and away we went.
Beautiful receiver and a fantastic job on the restorers part and yours. It's awesome to see the electrical gear from yesteryear being brought back to life. 🤠👍🎙⚡️
Nail on the head, Mike, "oxidation, bad solder joints, and intermittent connections" in my experience will always cause someone grief when working on this stuff. I completely went through one of these radios years ago and it worked great. (The BFO circuit isn't the best though). Anyway, I really enjoy your videos, and sometimes you crack me up. Keep up the great work!!!
It can be made quite passable on CW and it even will Q Multiply if everything is good. But without a product detector or proper SSB AGC, , an IF BFO is not going to do a great job on SSB.
Mike. Absolutely great video. There is a lot to learn from that experience. You really come across as a pro. I am glad you took the time to use that S 120 as it makes good sense beyond just parts changing. The rebuilt IF can photos really added to the story. Thanks again. Great experience. Ralph K8KXA
Thanks for watching the video. You can go crazy with these AC DC sets, attempting to bring them back and restore or improve the power safety at the same time.
Nice work, as usual. I too rebuilt my 1960's Xmas gift from Mom and Dad and replaced all resistors and capacitors, added a Heathkit Q multiplier and an Ameco preselector and it works very well.
I restored and recapped a Hallicrafters S120 in January 2021 and made a two-part video about it. I recall it being fairly hard and somewhat unrewarding. I had two parts radios to help me along the way. One was the very similar Lafayette HE-40. I got most of the hum out by rerouting the power cord, but not all of it. I sold it at NEAR-Fest to a nice elderly couple that had been eying it over the two days. We were both very happy with the sale. They got a good price, and I was glad to see it go. 73 Paul AA1SU
Fun video, Mike - thank you! These grounding gremlins absolutely love to hide in the cabinets of Heathkits from back in the day! Heathkit must taste yummy to ground gremlins. 73 OM es TU (dit dit) :)
Getting one of these secondhand seems like you are acquiring the Hurt Machine. :-( You have to have the collective patience of the entire abbey to deal with this.
This is a nice looking set. There is one, or a set that looks like this one, in the clock room at Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh. It is used to listen to the time signals from Colorado and keep the civil and sidereal clocks accurate.
Old tube gear is fun to fix. You must have had fun finding the oxidation problems. I picked up a nice older Hallicrafters receiver at a swap for $20, because the guy who was selling it said he had put in all new tubes and checked all of the voltages and all of the caps and all of the resistors (all in-circuit.) He had clearly put a lot of time into it. I got the impression that he'd been fairly meticulous, but he wasn't much of an RF tech. He had neither scope nor a sig gen. He was just a ham who was learning the hard way about old tube gear. But after all that effort he still couldn't hear any stations, (although he plugged it in for me and I could tell the audio stages were working.) But he was frustrated, so he was dumping it. It even came with a manual and schematics he had found while digging around on the web, and he had printed out all the pages and put them in a binder, and penciled in all of the measured voltages on every tube pin in the schematic. So I bought it, figuring it was the silver mica caps built into the IF cans, since the guy had tested or replaced everything else, and the voltages he had documented on the schematic all looked good. So it was either a bad new tube, or the caps in the cans. It was indeed the caps in the cans, a very quick troubleshooting job for a guy who started working on tube radios in the neighbor's garage TV shop at age 12 or 13. The poor seller simply didn't know the caps were there. So not much in the way of detective work necessary. But I'll keep those ground lug oxidation problems in mind. Thanks for going through the receiver for us.
@joewoodchuck3824 it's a figure of speech describing the vigor of a determined group promoting a new and fairly difficult restoration activity that might be required in a small set of radios.
Yes, oxidized ground connections, I have encountered that very same thing in the I.F. section at tube sockets of a 1938 Travler console radio I been restoring. Scraping ground connections & using a soldering gun, fixed the I.F. from going into oscillations the radio was having.
Thanks as this video took my knowledge of troubleshooting vintage electronics to the next level!...my own passion to restore vintage electronics has been replaced by watching videos wherein hands-on experts tackle a lot of different situations!!...doubt that designers ever considered long-term component failure, drift, oxidation, etc. in their designs!!!…do you think many were even aware?
The switch to high production meant replacing nuts and lock washers with rivets, use of self grounding tube sockets and integrated capacitors inside IF cans. Very effective for a radio that had an anticipated life of say 25 years maximum! But we are pushing 50-60 years on many "modern 1960s" sets!
I've restored dozens of those over the last 40 years. I can still remember when the SW bands were absolutely flooded with interesting stations. Although I a licensed amateur, I was still more interested in SW listening than talking. Today, the SW bands are pretty much abandoned. Sad. Still have a couple S-120's and its brother the S-118 which I like a little more. But they are just displays now.
I'm doing a DX160 Realistic (I guess its poorer younger solid state cousin). I love the knob twiddle factor. I've recapped it, cleaned pots....waiting on RF dual gang pot to arrive....then it might work good??? Maybe???? 🙄😆🤣 It is pure nostalgia for me, as I drooled over this rig when I read the Tandy catalogue as a lad many eons ago.
@@MIKROWAVE1 I agree. Following your advice I turned all screws as you said (in my tube HAM Kenwood Trio made in 1959) and it's better now. Thanks again.
I've never had an S-120. I did inherit my Dad's S-40B that I used as an SWL receiver as well as receiving CW in my Novice license days when I lived at my parents house. My dad did refurbish it replacing the old wax capacitors. It has been sitting in my basement and probably has not been running for over 30 years. The basement is dry, but still time takes its toll. I'm sure I'll be in for some 'fun' whenever I get time to run it again - lol.
Good video. My first receiver in 1962 was a Sky Buddy II - three tubes. It didn’t have a band spread feature, so 40 meters took up about 1/4 inch of dial space. So I figured - what I need is a bandspread control. So I moved up to the S-120. I don’t’ remember it that well, but it wasn’t the answer to all my problems, for sure. Modern space-age styling in a low profile box, but not a good receiver at all. It was no S-40 to be sure. Several decades later I bought another S-120 for nostalgic reasons. I did various things including the addition of a “real” BFO. But the hum was tremendous - more than I could stand. So it had to go. I wouldn’t mind finding another S-119, but have never seen one at a hamfest. - WA5BDU
Wow you went from a 3 tube radio to a 4 tube radio - SOCIAL CLIMBER! Hee. Seriously, these radios were a treasure to a kid. As you could hear, with restoration work and being patient on the adjustment of the top of the second IF transformer, the IF feedback can be controlled for Q Multiplication and stable BFO work. Its not the normal state for most old sets, and they get a bad reputation.
@@MIKROWAVE1 To complete receiver story - after the S-119 and S-120, I had an S-20R, then an SX-140 and finally the SX-111. Then moved on to the HW-101.
Actually there are a number of sources where you can get the schematic free, along with some MODs.! 1 of them is for the BFO. I have 2 of these, one for parts. I recognize the Green E-CAP the owner bought. Same one I purchased as well. I think it's cool! I agree with the oxidation issue. I ALWAYS take care of that problem with ALL radio's I restore!
I have a British PYE P131MBQ Jewel Case radio that for the life of me I cannot get working. It motorboats even though every capacitor was replaced - electrolytic or not. It did work once. Just once. However once I powered it down and up again, it went back to motorboating. Sounds like this thing. I have not thought about rebonding the rivets. It could be something like that for all I know.
Mike, you showed the difference between someone who watches videos and swaps parts, and someone who is next-level repair! For me the next-next-level is "Hummm... dynamic range? So maybe a balanced mixer here... This has crappy image rejection... a sprinkle of varactors... let's redesign this!" It's also nice that you fixed this, but I would never repair for hire. Look at how much time it took! Also beware! You will now probably get 100's of contacts with people wanting you to fix their RX. GB es 73 de W3IHM
Globar, did the guy bother to see if it worked before he "fixed" what was working? I could not have done all the restoring, but I am not so stupid to have missed the Globar resistor. Does it decode FT-8?
No it was not the GLOBAR that does the filaments, although that is a mystery item that measured higher too, around 800 Ohms. But it worked after warm up and went down to its nominal value. It was the dropping R to the diode rectifier replacing the selenium, that was the issue.
This receiver is not worth spending the money on. I had one blowup and even after it was totally repaired and tuned up it was not a very sensitive unit. I am a retired Radio/television Engineer and so I ended up selling it to a friend who just wanted to use it for listening to shortwave. It was great for Shortwave but above 20 Meg it was not very much of a receiver.
@@wa1ufo LOL The radio has always been a poor design for above 20Mhz since I owned it for many years and even when retubed and realigned professionally as that used to be my job for years, the radio I had never could make its specs above 20Mhz. I only post this as I liked the radio except for the poor sensitivity above 20Mhz.
OMG. This is one of the worst SW radios ever sold ! I own one just to put on the self and look at and that is it's best use. Cannot imagine putting any time fixing anything on this turkey.
I had an S-120 as a teenager... in the early 2000's 😊. I carried it home on my bike!
I had a BC-610 and carried it home on my bike.
@@CapecodhamThat's some bike!
Right on time - Picked up an S-120 on FB Marketplace and was just about to get it on the bench for the first "Once over".
At any one time several folks are working on these sets around the world. They made a lot of them and you see them at festers and flea markets.
So good to see vintage gear restored and made new again. That takes patience and great dedication. Kudos to you Mike and the fellow who did not spare a thing creating this restoration.
You can always go too far!
Well done Mike, it's always nice to help out a fellow him or shortwave listener. Thanks for pointing out the ground issues. You sir have good troubleshooting skills, great video thank you.
P.S. I have to revisit your excellent digital TV series a few times in hope it sinks in.
Loved this video, Mike! I think it was great of you to help the guy! My experience is getting two AA5's working and two I couldn't so I could relate to him and his frustration.
Top notch commentary on the refurbishment! Great work!
Thanks for watching!
Thanx for all the tips. I keep wanting to buy one of these old sliderule styled rigs. The DX-160 I had was a drift monster on SSB & CW.
Mine has same issues. Anyone have any suggestions?
It's funny. The original DX150 bipolar I got was solid as a rock for drift!
My dx160 is pretty stable but as usual the audio is not great in spite of doing the usual mod . Nice bit of kit though .
“I’m not a radio repair guy”. Well, he got band four working.
This was my first receiver as a Novice back in the early '70s. Picked it up in a pawn shop when I was in the Army at Ft. Hood. Coupled with a Johnson Challenger I was able to make a few contacts on the weekends. Outside antennas were not permitted so we took the army bedsprings and hooked the coax up to a pair of them and away we went.
I have been to Ft. Hood a couple of times doing testing on base. Its a bit hot and dusty.
Beautiful receiver and a fantastic job on the restorers part and yours. It's awesome to see the electrical gear from yesteryear being brought back to life. 🤠👍🎙⚡️
Even though there are voltages to respect, this stuff is easier to work on!
@@MIKROWAVE1 I agree 💯% things today are engineered to be thrown away .
Nail on the head, Mike, "oxidation, bad solder joints, and intermittent connections" in my experience will always cause someone grief when working on this stuff. I completely went through one of these radios years ago and it worked great. (The BFO circuit isn't the best though). Anyway, I really enjoy your videos, and sometimes you crack me up. Keep up the great work!!!
It can be made quite passable on CW and it even will Q Multiply if everything is good. But without a product detector or proper SSB AGC, , an IF BFO is not going to do a great job on SSB.
Mike. Absolutely great video. There is a lot to learn from that experience. You really come across as a pro. I am glad you took the time to use that S 120 as it makes good sense beyond just parts changing. The rebuilt IF can photos really added to the story.
Thanks again. Great experience. Ralph K8KXA
Excellent work, Mike! And of course these service tips can apply to any vintage tube receiver.
Thanks for watching the video. You can go crazy with these AC DC sets, attempting to bring them back and restore or improve the power safety at the same time.
Nice work, as usual. I too rebuilt my 1960's Xmas gift from Mom and Dad and replaced all resistors and capacitors, added a Heathkit Q multiplier and an Ameco preselector and it works very well.
Wow - now you are talking about maximum performance, 1960s style!
👍 Very nice Mike, glad to see the set working again.
It was driving me nuts. You can also use them to troubleshoot your outlets! Ha.
I restored and recapped a Hallicrafters S120 in January 2021 and made a two-part video about it. I recall it being fairly hard and somewhat unrewarding. I had two parts radios to help me along the way. One was the very similar Lafayette HE-40. I got most of the hum out by rerouting the power cord, but not all of it. I sold it at NEAR-Fest to a nice elderly couple that had been eying it over the two days. We were both very happy with the sale. They got a good price, and I was glad to see it go.
73 Paul AA1SU
Awesome! My dad had one of these when I was a kid. I loved searching for distant foreign radio transmissions. Brings back memories!
A lot of folks tell this same story. These were very popular sets.
Restorers: some of THE BEST advice contained in this video. Grounds. Thanks for bringing this to light.
I was pleased to see your happy face at the end of the video. This means that your efforts were not in vain. You did it. Bravo!
You are a radio repair guy! And an excellent one at that!
Fun video, Mike - thank you! These grounding gremlins absolutely love to hide in the cabinets of Heathkits from back in the day! Heathkit must taste yummy to ground gremlins. 73 OM es TU (dit dit) :)
Oh yes and cause ground loops in the transmitter modulators too.
Getting one of these secondhand seems like you are acquiring the Hurt Machine. :-( You have to have the collective patience of the entire abbey to deal with this.
Amazing restoration by both the original restorer and you! Kudos! And thanks for sharing!
This is a nice looking set.
There is one, or a set that looks like this one, in the clock room at Allegheny Observatory in Pittsburgh. It is used to listen to the time signals from Colorado and keep the civil and sidereal clocks accurate.
They sure built a lot of these sets and you see them at flea markets.
Old tube gear is fun to fix. You must have had fun finding the oxidation problems.
I picked up a nice older Hallicrafters receiver at a swap for $20, because the guy who was selling it said he had put in all new tubes and checked all of the voltages and all of the caps and all of the resistors (all in-circuit.) He had clearly put a lot of time into it. I got the impression that he'd been fairly meticulous, but he wasn't much of an RF tech. He had neither scope nor a sig gen. He was just a ham who was learning the hard way about old tube gear. But after all that effort he still couldn't hear any stations, (although he plugged it in for me and I could tell the audio stages were working.) But he was frustrated, so he was dumping it. It even came with a manual and schematics he had found while digging around on the web, and he had printed out all the pages and put them in a binder, and penciled in all of the measured voltages on every tube pin in the schematic. So I bought it, figuring it was the silver mica caps built into the IF cans, since the guy had tested or replaced everything else, and the voltages he had documented on the schematic all looked good. So it was either a bad new tube, or the caps in the cans. It was indeed the caps in the cans, a very quick troubleshooting job for a guy who started working on tube radios in the neighbor's garage TV shop at age 12 or 13. The poor seller simply didn't know the caps were there. So not much in the way of detective work necessary.
But I'll keep those ground lug oxidation problems in mind. Thanks for going through the receiver for us.
Bad IF caps? That's a first.
@@joewoodchuck3824oh its a whole cult thing. The simple silver plated chunks of mica are failing due to aging in the cans.
@@MIKROWAVE1 What does component aging have to do with cults?
@joewoodchuck3824 it's a figure of speech describing the vigor of a determined group promoting a new and fairly difficult restoration activity that might be required in a small set of radios.
I have a Hallicrafters wr- 1000 that needs a new home
Yes, oxidized ground connections, I have encountered that very same thing in the I.F. section at tube sockets of a 1938 Travler console radio I been restoring. Scraping ground connections & using a soldering gun, fixed the I.F. from going into oscillations the radio was having.
Yeah the wrong kind of feedback!
@@MIKROWAVE1 got that right!
Thanks as this video took my knowledge of troubleshooting vintage electronics to the next level!...my own passion to restore vintage electronics has been replaced by watching videos wherein hands-on experts tackle a lot of different situations!!...doubt that designers ever considered long-term component failure, drift, oxidation, etc. in their designs!!!…do you think many were even aware?
The switch to high production meant replacing nuts and lock washers with rivets, use of self grounding tube sockets and integrated capacitors inside IF cans. Very effective for a radio that had an anticipated life of say 25 years maximum! But we are pushing 50-60 years on many "modern 1960s" sets!
I bought one at a thrift store about 20 years ago for 10.99$ and it still works pretty good..
How can you beat that!
I've restored dozens of those over the last 40 years. I can still remember when the SW bands were absolutely flooded with interesting stations. Although I a licensed amateur, I was still more interested in SW listening than talking. Today, the SW bands are pretty much abandoned. Sad. Still have a couple S-120's and its brother the S-118 which I like a little more. But they are just displays now.
It's unfortunate, I mostly go for utility signals now
Great Job! I'll send ya my NC 183d Next! LOL!
The 183D would be a much bigger challenge, literally and figuratively! ;-)
Fascinating video! I had a S38b years ago. That was an equally lethal AC/DC set!
No the S38 is much better at that!😊
Isn't one of the mantras of any repair "check voltages first?".
Yes but not with your fingers.
I'm doing a DX160 Realistic (I guess its poorer younger solid state cousin). I love the knob twiddle factor. I've recapped it, cleaned pots....waiting on RF dual gang pot to arrive....then it might work good??? Maybe???? 🙄😆🤣 It is pure nostalgia for me, as I drooled over this rig when I read the Tandy catalogue as a lad many eons ago.
peace be upon you sir
I still have an S-118 that I bought for $25 back in 1986 or so from the original owner. Original box, too. Stashed away in my house... somewhere.
I would be using it and not stashing it. Why......?
Great job on getting it working great. Thanks for another informative video!
Thanks a lot. I think all your notes apply for tube SW receivers of other brands too and are often not considered .
A poor ground can cause all kinds of trouble!
@@MIKROWAVE1 I agree. Following your advice I turned all screws as you said (in my tube HAM Kenwood Trio made in 1959) and it's better now. Thanks again.
I've never had an S-120. I did inherit my Dad's S-40B that I used as an SWL receiver as well as receiving CW in my Novice license days when I lived at my parents house. My dad did refurbish it replacing the old wax capacitors. It has been sitting in my basement and probably has not been running for over 30 years. The basement is dry, but still time takes its toll. I'm sure I'll be in for some 'fun' whenever I get time to run it again - lol.
That will be a fun project!
Good video. My first receiver in 1962 was a Sky Buddy II - three tubes. It didn’t have a band spread feature, so 40 meters took up about 1/4 inch of dial space. So I figured - what I need is a bandspread control. So I moved up to the S-120. I don’t’ remember it that well, but it wasn’t the answer to all my problems, for sure. Modern space-age styling in a low profile box, but not a good receiver at all. It was no S-40 to be sure.
Several decades later I bought another S-120 for nostalgic reasons. I did various things including the addition of a “real” BFO. But the hum was tremendous - more than I could stand. So it had to go. I wouldn’t mind finding another S-119, but have never seen one at a hamfest. - WA5BDU
Wow you went from a 3 tube radio to a 4 tube radio - SOCIAL CLIMBER! Hee. Seriously, these radios were a treasure to a kid. As you could hear, with restoration work and being patient on the adjustment of the top of the second IF transformer, the IF feedback can be controlled for Q Multiplication and stable BFO work. Its not the normal state for most old sets, and they get a bad reputation.
@@MIKROWAVE1 To complete receiver story - after the S-119 and S-120, I had an S-20R, then an SX-140 and finally the SX-111. Then moved on to the HW-101.
Very good helpful thanks
Good to know about the grounding problem. Corrosion never sleeps and the metal oxides are semi-conductors, ie: not good conductors.
A semiconductive ground can be a lot of fun in amplifiers, receivers and transmitters!
well done! Thank you (WR600 owner) 73
Actually there are a number of sources where you can get the schematic free, along with some MODs.! 1 of them is for the BFO.
I have 2 of these, one for parts. I recognize the Green E-CAP the owner bought. Same one I purchased as well. I think it's cool!
I agree with the oxidation issue. I ALWAYS take care of that problem with ALL radio's I restore!
I have one in a wooden case, off to ebay for parts! It powers up however it doesn't pick up anything other than static.
Good luck on your set restoration! With only 4 tubes, it makes it easier.
Mike, you are getting old..?... But still sharp as a tac...W4DNQ
My uncle had one while in the Army.
I have a British PYE P131MBQ Jewel Case radio that for the life of me I cannot get working. It motorboats even though every capacitor was replaced - electrolytic or not. It did work once. Just once. However once I powered it down and up again, it went back to motorboating. Sounds like this thing. I have not thought about rebonding the rivets. It could be something like that for all I know.
It could be. Grounding is the silent killer.
Good to see you used oleic acid and naptha on the controls. 😉
Ever worked on a nicotine special?
Mike, you showed the difference between someone who watches videos and swaps parts, and someone who is next-level repair! For me the next-next-level is "Hummm... dynamic range? So maybe a balanced mixer here... This has crappy image rejection... a sprinkle of varactors... let's redesign this!" It's also nice that you fixed this, but I would never repair for hire. Look at how much time it took! Also beware! You will now probably get 100's of contacts with people wanting you to fix their RX. GB es 73 de W3IHM
There is no way repair for hire could work for me. That is for sure. I have no idea how folks do it.
I got one of these in the closet ready to be looked at. Curious as to why you adjust the BFO on AM?
Was this by chance also packaged as a Heathkit? It looks so much like the kit I got for Christmas abt 1968.
I have a working S20r Skyrider but I am tempted to get another Hallicrafters or Hammerlund
You like boat anchors? Go for a Murphy.
I'm looking at a video about a receiver thats worth more than Collins equipment!
Globar, did the guy bother to see if it worked before he "fixed" what was working? I could not have done all the restoring, but I am not so stupid to have missed the Globar resistor. Does it decode FT-8?
No it was not the GLOBAR that does the filaments, although that is a mystery item that measured higher too, around 800 Ohms. But it worked after warm up and went down to its nominal value. It was the dropping R to the diode rectifier replacing the selenium, that was the issue.
Great video. I bought a BC-221 from a great guy at a hamfest. He said it worked but it is dead. Did you ever have one?
I never buy anything that works.
What frequency were you listening to daytime AM hams?
More importantly, what kind of antenna does he have? A good antenna can make all the difference.
I have a good antenna!
Mikowave1, were you listening to 7290 kHz?
Oh I heard 40m AM, but 🎬 this was 3885 4PM!
AM hams can only be heard in the morning.
@@Capecodham Good one.
WOW how much did it cost after the "rebuild"?
Great question.
This receiver is not worth spending the money on. I had one blowup and even after it was totally repaired and tuned up it was not a very sensitive unit. I am a retired Radio/television Engineer and so I ended up selling it to a friend who just wanted to use it for listening to shortwave. It was great for Shortwave but above 20 Meg it was not very much of a receiver.
This video disproves your point! He has band 4 working great. What were you thinking of in this comment? It is clear you are wrong!
@@wa1ufo LOL The radio has always been a poor design for above 20Mhz since I owned it for many years and even when retubed and realigned professionally as that used to be my job for years, the radio I had never could make its specs above 20Mhz. I only post this as I liked the radio except for the poor sensitivity above 20Mhz.
Oh for god's sakes !.......you say that NOT a "Radio Guy", so what do you mean "it dosn't work" ? How would you know ????????
OMG. This is one of the worst SW radios ever sold ! I own one just to put on the self and look at and that is it's best use. Cannot imagine putting
any time fixing anything on this turkey.
One of the most popular too. I just saw another one. They can be made to work - with some work.