The Telefunken Jubilate 1161 tube radio - First look
How big does a fuzzy-wuzzy have to be to be called a dust bunny?
Click here to see all the Telefunken Jubilate 1161 posts.
The Jubilate has been waiting patiently for me to get around to looking at it ever since my brother-in-law dropped it off. I wanted to get hold of a variac and an isolation transformer before starting work on it. I managed to find an isolated variac last month, so it is time to get on with things.
Telefunken is a German brand - hardly surprising since I live in Germany. The 1161 was manufactured around 1961, so it is about as old as the Blaupunkt Granada my wife and I have. There’s more info about the 1161 on this web site.
As always, the first thing to do is to look the thing over and clean it up a bit.
This radio is not in bad shape, but it does need some work done.
| Telefunken Jubilate 1161 |
|---|
 |
 |
 |
From the outside, the worst thing is that is has droplets of house paint on the wooden housing, and the decorative brass discs are missing from the center of the knobs - and there’s a couple of bad scratches in the wood.
From the inside, about all that looks wrong is that it is fully of fuzzy-wuzzies that are trying to grow into dust bunnies.
| Fuzzy wuzzies |
|---|
 |
 |
That’s easily taken care of with a soft bristle brush and a vacuum cleaner.
The old radio hummed a bit when I first turned it on, but it settled down and got quiet after a few minutes. I ran the power up slowly using the variac to give the old electrolytic capacitors a chance to “reform” before going to full power. Maybe it helped, maybe it didn’t.
At any rate, despite not having an antenna connected, the old radio managed to pick up an FM station. It sounds OK, and all the controls seem to work.
I plan on replacing the selenium bridge rectifier it has, as well as replacing the larger electrolytic capacitors. I’ve also got a Bluetooth module with a power supply to go in the 1161. It’ll connect to the tape line input that the radio has, allowing my brother-in-law to play music from his phone to his sixty some odd year old tube radio.
Helping out with the repairs and modifications is the included schematic diagram, with adjustment details.
| Schematic diagram |
|---|
 |
 |
 |
I found a complete PDF of the 1161 diagrams, so you don’t have to try squinting at the photographed copies. The original is available here. I’ve put a copy of the file here beside the blog post, just in case it should disappear from the internet.
I did most of the needed clean-up today. I’ll take care of the wood some evening, then get started on the electronics.