The Telefunken Jubilate 1161 tube radio - Bluetooth adapter
Making a Bluetooth speaker out of the Jubilate 1161.
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The final step in rejuvenating the Jubilate 1161 was to install a Bluetooth adapter in it, making it useful as a speaker for any device with Bluetooth.
I did something similar with the Granada my wife and I have, with the difference that the one for the Granada is an external device with a battery.
For the Jubilate, I bought a bare Bluetooth module and a PCB mountable 240VAC to 5VDC power supply. Both are mounted on a small universal PCB then attached to the back cover of the radio.
| Bluetooth |
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There’s a simple signal adder made from two resistors to join the stereo signals from the Bluetooth module to a mono signal for the tape input of the Jubilate. The power is simply tapped off of the AC input to the bridge rectifier for the 250VDC B+.
| Bluetooth connections |
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Oddly enough, both circuit diagrams that I have for the Jubilate 1161 show the tape and phono jacks as three pin DIN connectors while the radio itself has 5 pin DIN connectors.
From the outside, the only signs of the Bluetooth adapter are the screwheads on the back panel.
| Back panel |
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All of the standard bands still work. You listen to Bluetooth by pressing the two buttons on the front of the radio that have the “TA” marking.
| Switch to Bluetooth |
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That’s the langwelle “LW” (long wave) button and the mittelwelle “MW” (medium wave) button. That was the original way that Telefunken built the radio to switch to the tape input.
We gave the radio back to my brother-in-law yesterday as a Christmas present. Not so much the radio or the replacement parts or the Bluetooth parts, but the time it took to put it all together. It wasn’t planned that way, but what with the way things went this fall the timing worked out that way.
We played Santana’s Abraxas album from Spotify on my phone to the Bluetooth adapter in the Jubilate to demonstrate it, then streamed Christmas music on it all afternoon during the get together.
Merry Christmas!