Packard Forum Index » ZIS, ZIL, and other Packard Cousins!

Howard, maybe the blue tint was to give it a more white look, that's the only thing I can think of.

Here's a link I found on working on those old radios, I found it very interesting and good.

youtube.com/watch?v=d8wWw92HNZg&t=8s

Now the bad news now you got me thinking about staring up another Project Blog on repairing my radios.
Wes

Usual illumination but no light show in a ZIS radio, unfortunately. As a little substitute, please find attached the nocturnal glimmer of a Soviet neon sign.

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Howard (HH56), don't know why the above shown radio doesn't perform a light show but two hours ago another owner sent to me images of his spare radio and told me, that the Soviet electronic engineers installed the same light effect into their propaganda devices too. He could even offer an extract of the radio manual.

"The scale is provided with a conditional gradation in the form of equal divisions, and the color of the illumination of the scale changes depending on the position of the tone control: the red color corresponds to the emphasis on higher, and green - the lower tone frequencies; white color indicates an emphasis on the middle frequencies of the sound spectrum."

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Gerd, If they copied the Packard radio which was built by Philco, a bulb covered by a metal hood with a slot like window is behind the wheel with the opening facing outward so a narrow beam of light shines thru the wheel. Very close to and on the other side of the wheel is the dial plastic. A pickup which is part of probably Lucite plastic that has the dial numbers embossed on contains the pickup portion which sits closely in front of the wheel. As the wheel turns it moves to a different color and the color is transmitted thru the plastic pickup and changes the dial colors.

In the bare dial photos, I did not show the additional felt and metal pieces which keep the light closely confined to the plastic so it does not shine thru the PB openings but those are shown in the last two photos. Don't remember what the purple celluloid filter does at the moment.

The color is part of the tone control. Been a long time and my memory could be out to lunch but as I recall, more bass is supposed to be warmer so dial is red and as tone control moves toward more treble it changes to amber then blue.

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