Scott AC-10 / Frankie
As-found photos of the Scott AC-10 radio. I purchased this set because I liked the looks of the AC-10 and I am also a fan of E H Scott radios and their history. One big problem with this set was it did not have a cabinet or power supply, and finding either one of those was going to be difficult. The radio needed a lot of work. One thing unknow at purchase time was the fact the tuning knob had been pushed in from the front, bending the tuning mechanism and breaking the phenolic shaft to the oscillator tuning capacitor. The AC-10 was designed in late 1929. This version, with a screen grid tube used as a mixer, came out in about March, 1930.
View of the IF transformers. One of the wires going to a grid cap had a bad connection. The wax on the transformers was cracking and coming off. Other AC-10’s that I’ve seen have not had their IF transformers dipped in wax.
The broken wax on the IF transformers was repaired with the help of a heat gun. The audio ckoke on the right was opened up. Luckily I found the open while unwinding the first layer of very fine magnet wire. I never would have been able to re-wing the very fine wire! Other repairs included stuffing the old paper capacitor housings with new capacitors, replacing one out of tolerance resistor, repairing the tuning housing, replacing the dial cord, and a general clean up and polishing.
I spotted this small table in a Deseret Industries thrift store here in Utah with a price of $10. The idea came to me to use this table as a skeleton and make a Scott Napier style cabinet out of it for the Scott AC-10 tuner chassis that I had. I could cut out some paper phenolic for the speaker grill and tuner front. I could put some speaker fabric on the sides and front of the cabinet. I could make a power supply and put it on the small shef under the table. I would be able to operate the Scott AC-10 tuner chassis, and I thought the finished product would look real cool! I thought that I would name her Frankie! The tuner chassis would remain 100% original and unmodified. Repaired and restored yes, but modified no.
The power supply and power amplifier that I constructed for Frankie. The plate transformer and filter choke are Silver-Marshall. All the film filter capacitors are mounted in the metal box behind the UX-280 rectifier tube. The tube at far right is a UX-245 power triode. At far left in the back is a hand-wound filament transformer for the tuner and power supply tubes. The power resistors were selected to provide the correct B+ voltages. I purchased the speakers for $6 at a thrift store. They came out of a stereo speaker enclosure from the 1980s or 1990s. The supports for the speaker board are the original panel supports for the AC-10.
This page was added to the site on January 26, 2023
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