This RCA Radiola III is from the RadioActivity Auction of MAARC Mid Atlantic Antique Radio Club annual event on June 23rd, 2012.
The set was in a fair condition, no tubes, some rust spots spread all over, as you can see in the pictures. The interstage transformer was open an the set was quite dirt. The rheostat and the coil unit were in a great shape, just needing a complete cleaning.
The restoration process was a easy one. Phosphoric acid based rust remover and steel brush removed the rust pretty well from knnob shafts, transformer base, and the ground sheet. The bakelite partes were washed with water and laundry soap. The interstage transformer was replaced by the a universal type made by Hammond and sold by various dealers as AES. The case from the old transformer was sanded and black painted, and it fitted the new transformer perfectely, as you can see in the picture. The terminal board that came in the new transformer is a duplicate of the original. Also, I replaced the grid leak resistor 2M ohms. I used white lacquer stick for filling in the marks on radio Bakelite.
I don`t have any WD11 since they are very expensive. I built 2 adapters from UX to WD11, and I tested the radio with 2 UX199 and 2 864 tubes. The latter performed much better than the former in the set, with clearer and louder sounds. It is working great even with a Utah high impedance speaker. This set was made to work with high impedance headphones.
