Old time radio

I’ve been thinking about getting a classy looking stereo in the studio for awhile now. I put the word out to a few of my friends to keep their eyes open for something that could be retro fit with new speakers. After a few weeks Steve from beerorkid.com came through with this old, slightly abused radio and was kind enough to hold on to it until I had time to make the 600 mile round trip to pick it up.

Old time radio 2

The inside of the radio is pretty much empty so it should be easy to make room for new components. I plan to save all of the front control knobs, so I needed a power amp that only has a few switches that could easily be adapted to the original controls. It also needed to be powerful enough to drive a set of 8 inch speakers and some wireless feature like bluetooth would be a plus.

Bluetooth powersupply

After a bit of research I came across this stereo 100 watt (@ 6 ohms) power amp with built in bluetooth. It only has two switches (on/off and bluetooth/line in) and a volume knob which means it should work well with the original radio controls. The main board is also easy to get to so wiring to the new power amp should be easy enough.

For speakers I’ve decided to go with a set of 8 inch bookshelf speakers from monoprice. Most reviewers say that the sound quality to price ratio make these a decent option. They aren’t audiophile quality, but neither is the bluetooth i’ll be using to link this to my phone and computer.

I’m currently waiting on the parts to show up, then I’ll just need to find some time to actually install the speakers and get things mounted. I’ll post some more as the project progresses.

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