Hallicrafters S-107 (Mark 2) Communications Receiver

Another Ebay purchase. This S-107 cost me $28, and arrived in a very sorry state. Here are some photos of what it looked like, out of the box:

You can see a lot of rust on all the surfaces. The knobs are all original, though, except the Sensitivity knob.

Quite a bit of surface rust on the underside, too.

The under-chassis is quite clean, with all the original components.

This shows the shipping damage: one 6BA6 completely destroyed, another 6BA6 bent and cracked at the base, the cabinet has sustained a heavy blow which has bent it to one side. But, more seriously, there is a missing 3rd. IF coil. This wasn't shipping damage: it simply wasn't there! Fortunately I managed to locate a replacement, at Gary Brown's site. Here's a closeup of the tube damage and missing part:

You can see the years of accumulated dust and debris!

To replace the 6BA6 broken tubes, I used a 6BA6 I happened to have in my collection, and a 6AU6A which is a usable substitute.

Here's a photo of the chassis after some light cleaning with steel wool, and with the replacement tubes.

I removed the cabinet, the faceplate, and the dial glass. The faceplate (shown above) was in very poor condition. I removed as much of the rust as I could with a small wire brush attachment on a Dremel tool, and then I taped over the dial marking words. I then spray painted the grey half of the panel with silver paint, removed the tape, and covered everything in a light coat of polyurethane lacquer. It looked better, but not very satisfactory.

So I decided to completely refinish the face. I repainted in gold and silver metallic. I then created black lettering in a font as close as possible to the original, and printed on clear transparency paper designed for window decals. I applied these and then lacquered over the panel, in several coats, lightly sanding with very fine grit after each coat.

On the chassis, I ordered the missing 3rd. IF can, attached it and soldered in the connecting components. I then used steel wool to bring up a bit of a shine. Here's a picture of the rear of the S107 after reinserting the chassis.