Scott vs. the Supply Chain

[Kent King]

we hear lots of talk these days about supply chain, but Scott suffered from challenges for many years. Here is a new one for me....I am restoring the AW23 that fellow member Kevin found on the trash pile in Columbus a couple months ago. Got it up here over the weekend and opened it up...

it is 100% Potter capacitors. Now I have probably been inside a couple dozen AW23 sets and every one I've seen has Sprague caps. But these are clearly original, the solder joints are factory. So - for how long did Scott use Potter caps? Sprague have trouble delivering? Has anyone else seen a set with original Potter caps like this?

Kent

[Kent King]

So this set became more of a challenge: Pulled off the antenna coil cover and the entire area inside is yellow (compare to other coil in the can to the left). The yellow film is the wire enamel, wax, and even some of the copper that was vaporized by a lightning strike on the antenna. The small coil on the right is inside the antenna coil and as you can see, melted, connections burned off...it's toast, as they say. Fortunately, I was able to extract a replacement from a parts chassis. Sadly, this isn't the first one I've encountered.

[Kent King]

Not bad, but far from perfect...I'd say after cleaning it up it will come out in the 6/10 or 7/10 score range. Yes, the set was very much unmolested, I've only noticed a couple small things in the power supply. I don't think the tuner was ever serviced. 

[Thomas Day]

This looks absolutely pristine.  How is the chrome?  

[David C. Poland]

Kent - there is a service bulletin for the Scott AW-23 to replace all the .1 MFD 400 volt  caps in the receiver with 600 volt .05 MFD caps when they come for service. Is what I did for my 7 knob AW-23 a couple years ago.

[Kent King]

I checked tonight and you are right, the IF caps are 0.1. Should those be replaced with .05 caps?

[Kent King]

Well, that fits, this is an early (5-knob) 23. And I have to admit, I haven't worked on nearly as many early sets - most are the later version.

[Norman S Braithwaite]

Yes, two or three  sets, all early versions.  I suspect that Sprague offered a better quality product for a competitive price.  Also, going from recollection, the Potter capacitors are all 0.1-mfd to the IF transformers.  Later sets had 0.1 and 0.05 and different hole sizes.