serial number 6841
Ferguson model 356A s/n 6841 This is a three valve plus
rectifier superhet table radio housed in a veneered wood case with
sloping
front. Designed to operate from AC mains 200/250Volts 40-60Hz. Valve
line up: ECH42 EBF80 EL41 EZ80. It has Long, medium and short wavebands
and a three position tone control. The back cover has a frame aerial
which covers the medium waveband.
This radio is one of a number Ferguson 353A (AC model) and 353U (AC/DC
model) series of radios which differ only in the casings. The price
when first produced in 1953 was �16.3s.1d. As can be seen Ferguson was
part of Thorn Electrical Industries. (Ferguson Radio Corporation
founded
in 1923 was taken over by Thorn in 1936)
I cannot remember when I purchased this radio, but it must have been around 1998 and it has taken me over ten years to get round to opening it up giving it a clean and a look at the inside.
By turning the radio upside down there is limited access to the underside of the chassis.The only problem is that the set will not stand on its head without falling over!
The frame aerial has relatively short leads and needs to be connected for the set to work.
The chassis can be removed from the case without removing the flanged knobs which pass through the large holes in the dial.
These two wooden supports and brackets have been used many times to provide safe access to the underside of various radios. Sometimes the ends of the chassis can be supported using 'G' clamps if there are no horizontal runners as there are here. I noticed that the mains transformer had been hot in the past and had been leaking molten wax. Before energizing I checked the transformer for continuity and the smoothing capacitors. All seemed well and the set burst into life when switched on, though I noticed that a couple of wax coated decoupling capacitors got slightly warm and testing revealed that they were candidates for replacement. To the left of the picture above you will see the socket for the gramophone input which caused me a headache! The set would only play at low volume, the volume control was ineffective, though there was no fault with it or the the circuitry leading to it. Eventually I discovered that the outer screen of the lead connected to the socket was shorting to the inner conductor and thus short circuiting the volume control so that there was no load for the detector section of the EBF80 to develop a voltage across.
A thoughtful idea to make sure that replacement valves are inserted correctly.
Licence plate
