Well, I added the lamp in series more in case of hurting the radio than me, but I see what you mean [Linked Image]

I like EM valves too. I have PDFs about them. I need to check with the author first, but I wish it would be OK to reproduce the chapter-and-verse about them here too. Those old ones with the V-shaped beams that converged as the tape bias approached the right point used to facinate me, on my Uncle's old Grundig tape recorder (open reel tape) when I was a kid.

The old Philips I mentioned is now picking up BBC Radio 4 on LW198 and a good number of MW stations, but there are still a lot of overheated, badly specified parts in it. It has a beauty of a case and looks cool. Once it is working nicely again I'll stick a photo of it up here.

And now, somebody's given me an old 1950s Bush set, and I can immediately see three reasons why it can't work before even plugging it in! Two dud joints and a definitely dud capacitor all from some repair job I reckon to have been done 20 years or so ago. I reckon there's basically nothing wrong with it, but it could do with a bit of a cleaning-up though. Tested them, and all the valves still work. I remember an old lady who was next-door-but-one until about 1974; she had the same model, and I clearly remember it had a lovely sound, even though I was only 7. I remember tuning it to listen to ABBA :-)