Radio Tintoretto – Rescue

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Overview
• Battery Leakage – Cleanup
• Battery Holder – Modification
• Other small retouches
• Technical details

Introduction

Spotted this radio at the local flea market. Not easy to miss in the pile of gray and dusty things. I took a sneak peek inside and cringed, batteries were still in and corroded to the point of being unrecognizable. It was a Si based transistor radio and not Ge, but I got curious.

Overview

Pictures of Radio Tintoretto, both outside and inside:

Battery Leakage – Cleanup

After I removed the battery holder, I quickly powered the radio from the bench power supply (current limited) and all seemed fine.

I cleaned the case with Vinegar, but some rust spots were impossible to take out. I tried Acetone out of frustration, but this was a big mistake as plastic started to soften. I caught it and quickly washed the Acetone with running water. Luckily this only affects the inside of the back cover, the radio still looks fine from outside.

One of the speaker wires also snapped during the cleaning. Oh well …

Battery Holder – Modification

The next challenge was to find a suitable battery holder. This proved more difficult than anticipated.

Standard battery holders don’t even slide in, the space is too tight:

I ordered two other style of battery holders (the smallest I could find on rs-online.com), but neither fit. Wires stick outwards, while the original had the wires stick out from in-between the batteries:

Thus, I had to modify the holder – first using a sharpie and then using a mini drill pen with a 2mm cylindrical drill bit.

Now it fits properly and case can be closed:

Other small retouches

Some wires were at the point of snapping, so I re-soldered them, including the speaker wire which had already snapped during the corrosion cleanup:

I cleaned the volume pot with contact cleaner and added a bit of silicone to the screw holding down the circuit board:

Technical details

It was rather difficult to read the markings on the transistors. Not being too keen in taking them out, I had to employ some tedious lighting techniques with macro photography, to see them.

The transistors inside the Radio are:

C1417 – closest to ferrite antenna
C1417 – closest to yellow IF
BC548B
CS9013 x2 – final transistors

Some radios have a small plastic spacer in between the solder side of the circuit board and the speaker code. This one … has 3 tiny pieces of carton. Not sure if this was not done by previous owner (as it to reduce some rattle) or if is stock ? I left them in.

Below an AM band scan from late in the evening:

If Google is representative of all the things in the world, this radio seems to be the only one that exists. Or nobody considered it worthy enough to blog about it. Or maybe I didn’t use Google Images correctly. But I couldn’t find anything on it.