Northern Electric 5002

Manufacturer: Northern Electric, Montreal, Canada
Model: 5002 Baby Champ
Approximate Date Of Manufacture: 1946-1947
Type: 5-tube Superheterodyne AM/SW radio
Tube lineup: 12SA7, 12SK7, 12SQ7, 50L6GT, 35Z5GT (octal)
Status: working, restored
Where purchased: eBay, February 2007

Description

This is the Northern Electric "Baby Champ" or "rainbow" bakelite table radio, identical to the popular model 5000 but with a shortware band, running from approximately 6.0 to 15.0 MHz. With a single shortwave band with a small dial and no bandspread it is difficult to tune shortwave stations. There is no loop antenna, just a length of wire.

As received the radio was working. Over the years someone had added new power supply filter caps, parallelling them in with the old ones. All of the paper caps appeared to be original.

Restoration was pretty standard and included cleaning, replacing all wax paper caps, and restuffing the electrolytic filter cap. The radio was also realigned using the manufaturer's procedure.

The radio is quite sensitive, even on shortwave. This is amazing for a radio with only 5 tubes.