Good Morning List,
A few weeks
ago, fellow Listmember ForwardLook Frank posted that he
was beginning a service of modifying factory AM radios
to accept signals from other devices, such as portable CD
players.
I am his first customer, and I wanted to make this
report.
I sent Frank the "best-looking" Model
860 radio I had accumulated over the 6 years I've spent restoring my 1959
Plymouth.. I had no idea if it even worked, but it appeared complete and
undamaged.
Frank went thru the entire radio, top to
bottom. He cleaned everything thoroughly, replaced two
burnt-out tubes, adjusted the tuner (reportedly it would only get 3
stations, now it gets 17), he buffed and polished the knobs, (even the case!),
and did many other things to restore the looks and function of the original
unit. He even replaced the clear plexiglas cover.
He then added an input jack in the far rear
corner (out of sight when installed in dash). He added
a remote toggle switch which changes input signal from regular AM radio to the
CD player. (I will probably locate this switch low on the dash where it will be
less obvious.) Having this switch, I won't have to crawl under the
dash to plug/unplug each time I want to switch from CD player to factory AM
function.
He also installed an auxiliary power supply in the
radio itself which runs the CD player, so I will never have to use
or replace batteries in the CD player. The CD player I have has both AM and
FM, so technically I never need the original AM radio, but I wanted it to
work.
I mailed the radio to him in a new
cardboard box, with good packing. He returned it to me in the same
box, very well packed. He sent along a list of work performed, and
instructions on how to operate it.
To sum up, his work was neat, clean, and professional. For the
price, this is a bargain! I urge any Members who have radios in
need any of the aforementioned improvements to contact Frank. He will
only accept and fix one radio at a time. His Email address is fwdlkfjw@xxxxxxxx.
Happy Holidays to All,
Roger Howard
Seattle
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