The AM Forum

Get a load of how badly addicted my pal Bob, W6OZI,  is to Hallicrafters. Try to overlook the first thing he shows you in his shack.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcR36yZJuf4&feature=youtu.be

Fantastic shack with some great gear nicely laid out.  I bet that 20V2 sounds great!
Joe, W3GMS

It's okay, he sounds apologetic, as if he has to get it out of the way so he can talk about the cool stuff.

"Look, I know I have bad breath but let me show you my artwork!"

I have one of those little Echophones, mine's not nearly as good looking though: no dial cover, bandspread tuning cord is gone, knobs squeak, needs recapped, speaker missing, and has some surface rust. I need to tear it apart and clean it up some day.

Echophone and Hallicrafters did some business collaboration when Echophone got into severe financial difficulties.  Ray Durst of Echophone ultimately became the VP of Hallicrafters.  Some early Hallicrafters licensing issues were eased when Silver Marshall went in bankruptcy.  Its very interesting to see how some of the early companies got intertwined with each other. 

Hallicrafters tried and sucessfully delivered a lot of bang for the buck with their amateur gear.  Its faults could be lived with by most amateurs.  Due to that, I personally like the early performance of the National product line over Hallicrafters.   

Joe, W3GMS   

OMG!  It's Colonel Sanders-------wearing sunglasses and shorts!!  :D  Seriously, that is what I'd call a DELUXE collection. 

The Hallicrafters S-38 series is basically a sort of offspring of the Echophone EC-1. I have the original WWII EC-1, not the postwar EC-1B. Biggest thing I hate about that receiver is the hot chassis design. Had it wired one way and would get zapped when it was on if I touched something grounded while touching the case of the EC-1. So I swapped the wires around, now I get zapped when the switch is off but not when it is on. By looking at the schematic, if you have the switch on the neutral side, the AC is going through the whole filament string before it hits that ground. But, when you open that switch up, its dumping the entire AC input on that ground through the filament string. Putting the switch on the hot side puts that ground as the first thing the AC sees after coming out of the switch. Next time I work on it I'm gonna rewire it like it shows in the mods schematic so that the switch is on the hot side ahead of all the filaments, then the chassis ground is at the end of that string.

Factory wired: www.nostalgiaair.org/Resources/view.asp?FN=\M0004417.pdf
Mods: http://www.geojohn.org/Radios/MyRadios/EC1/EC-1-Schematic.jpg

Well done, love the music and editing

A nice show and I'm sort of jealous! My SX-28 is almost as nice looking, but my R-12 speaker needs major help. I have considered trying to find a new coaxial speaker for it. If not, a re-cone. The trick to these pretty collections is having space to show them and years to work on them! A spacetime continuum.