Some Ameco Pics.

Have you ever felt so sorry for a radio, that you had to buy it because of its abuse? Well that happened at Nearfester when I saw this little Ameco TX-86 that was literally eaten through with rust on one side. It was ridiculous looking, but I bought it for a donation of 10 dollars.

After I pried the perforated box off the front panel, which was a tough enough job, I saw that there was surface rust on most of the the inside chassis. Also, ALL of the tubes were smoky. All gassy - not one good tube. Where the hell had this thing been stored? It takes a lot to penetrate the vacuum seal of tubes. My guess is that it took years of wet and fantastic temperature extremes to accomplish this. So the old Naval Jelly and wire brush came out in force. Some of the fasteners simply broke, they were so bad.

The refinishing was a lot of work. I used black crackle on the outside perforated box and copper spray paint to touch up the copper plated front panel that was missing copper in places.
Then after quite a bit of sleuthing work (worst schematic ever drawn by a supposedly professional company), some rewiring and undoing mods, some parts replacement like all electrolytics, and a fresh set of tubes - My lord it puts out clean CW on all bands. Even with my command set power supply which is a bit low in recommended voltages, it does 35 Watts out. It has an extra stage that provides plenty of drive for the 8552 (6883B) (8032A) 12V mobile version 6146B final.

I have not tried AM yet. It has a primitive screen modulator.   

The line up is a 12BY7 Oscillator multiplier, 6BQ5 Driver (way overkill probably so it works on 6M!), 8552 Final, 12AX7 speech, and 12AQ5 modulator. It also can be wired for 6V if you substitute a 6146 final and 6AQ5 modulator. They play games with the fils to retain the 6BQ5 in either configuration and I will let you figure that cleverness out.