Scott Masterpiece with aftermarket Browning FM tuner

[Stu Smalinskas]

I recently acquired this 14-tube radio.  It has an aftermarket FM tuner installed back in 1947.  It was installed rather intrusively using the empty space in the cabinet with a cutout on the side.  It is structurally braced in there and has an escutcheon on the outer surface.  The side also shows three poorly filled holes from an aborted attempt to place the tuner.

My question is whether there is any value in leaving the aftermarket tuner in there during restoration, or whether I should remove the tuner, disappear the large hole, and place a new layer of veneer on that side.  I'm leaning toward the latter.

[Scott Seickel]

The early aftermarket tuner is a part of the radio's history.  If you can make it look reasonable, I would leave it.  Fix the damaged areas if you want.  Having it won't hurt the set's value if you repair the damaged areas- it might actually increase it's monetary value.

[David C. Poland]

It ought sound pretty good, properly restored including replacement of filters and capacitors.

The 14 tube Scott Masterpiece is essentially a 12 tube Scott Super Twelve with a revised audio section. I have one and it sounds really good feeding an CD player into the phono input. Lots of volume available and solid bass.

That speaker is used in Scott models: Sixteen, Masterpiece you have and the early Phantoms with 6V6 output tubes.  I have encountered several examples of that speaker and half had a bad output transformer. Voice coil is 38 ohms so unlikely you will find a replacement if you need one. But I have a fix if you need - a particular universal 10 watt replacement to which I was able to add turns to attain needed matching.

[Stu Smalinskas]

I'll keep that in mind and let you know If I need further help.  I have yet to go through the unit to assess it.  It sits in the queue until I finish other radios.