RADIO REPAIR GUY
EMAIL US HERE
Phone Number
 

Old Radios - Repair Costs

Greater than 90% of really old radios (1932- 1943) have severe problems that must be rectified for them to work. Why? Three reasons.

ONE - These radios were not "put away" because they were working perfectly. In fact, most old radios including those from 1932-1955 were taken out of service because they stopped working  and the owners did not want to pay good money to repair them because they had this great new device in their living room - a TV. In fact I suspect that ALL radios that were relegated to the attic, garage, etc. were put there because of the introduction of TV.

TWO - there are certain components in these radios that fail absolutely over time. Capacitors, for example, "dry out" and thus fail. Tubes on the other hand do not fail over time. These "aged components" must be replaced for the radio to function reliably.  Other items that are labor intensive include knob removal - where decades of storage results in "welding" of knobs to shafts, cleaning of the tuning variable capacitor which can have decades of dust and insect build-up, dangerous line cords that have frayed over the years and many other age related problems. The manufacturing processes of 70 years ago were far inferior to the standards of today. The replacement components that we put in your radio have an almost infinite shelf life.

THREE - many older radios  are repair orphans, where a service guy attempted to fix it, abandoned the repair leaving failed components in place, wires disconnected, etc.; then closing up the radio and returning it to its owner - 70 years later a descendent, not knowing the history, sends it out for repair. This can be extremely expensive to recreate what was done to the radio. We are seeing many examples of this coming in for repair. In such cases there will be an additional "Hack Charge"

So, between ONE and TWO and THREE there generally is no such thing as a "cheap fix" See Typical Repair.

 

Radio Repair Guy