The Art of Manliness » Uncategorized

How to Choose a Camp Stove

Darren Bush — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 22:31:09 +0000

The question of how to choose a camp stove sometimes ends up being a discussion with the rancor of a religious debate. Ultralighters, basecampers, and everyone in-between has an opinion. So let’s explore the different options, and maybe we can come to an ecumenical agreement.

There are many stoves on the market, and almost all have unique features that give them their niche. Ultra-light, ultra-small, ultra-blowtorch: they all have functions that serve a certain kind of purpose on a certain kind of trip. The “best” stove is the one that’s best for you, when it’s best for you.

Stoves are usually divided up into two main categories: liquid fuel stoves and canister stoves. They are often further divided into basecamp and portable stoves. Let’s take a look at some of the features and drawbacks of the various stoves in each grouping.

Basecamp Liquid Stoves and Canister Stoves

Advantages: Higher heat output. Pot stability. Capacity for larger pots.
Disadvantages: Bulky and heavy. For canister stoves, the heat costs a little more.

I lumped the basecamp stoves into one category as they are more or less identical in their functions. These are the large, two-burner (or three) stoves you recognize from when you were a youth. They’re big, they put out a lot of heat, and they’re great for recreating conditions that rival the home kitchen. In fact, we’ve been known to use our nostalgically green body with red tank Coleman two-burner for cooking french fries on the porch to keep the kitchen from becoming a franchise of McDonald’s with all the attending grease and none of the profit.

I also have a flat propane-fueled basecamp stove that fits nicely into spots where the Coleman would be a squeeze. It doesn’t throw off the BTUs of a Coleman, but it’s quiet, clean, and quite a bit lighter. So what if your coffee takes eight minutes instead of six? You’re outside, enjoying a lovely view, not at Starbucks.

The benefits of basecamp stoves are obvious: more heat and more stability. If you can cook in a kitchen, you can cook on a basecamp stove. But what they gain in convenience, they lose in portability. Take one backpacking? Nope. How about on a canoe or kayak trip? A canoe trip, perhaps, especially if you’re not portaging and if you’re cooking for a very large group (over a dozen or so). A kayak trip, well, they’re probably not going to fit through the hatches. Oh well.

Portable Stoves

Liquid-fueled

Advantages: Best cost to heat ratio. Good for air travel (if stove is clean). Perform well in cold weather. Option to burn multiple fuels. Usually field-serviceable.
Disadvantages: Can be fussy and require priming to start. Possibility of pollution is higher.

A venerable Optimus 8R

These are common and popular, as they can travel all over the world, many burning whatever fuel they come across. They are lightweight and portable, sometimes stowing inside your cook kit to save space. They are relatively simple little contraptions, so they are long-lived and usually field-serviceable. They are considerably less expensive per BTU as liquid fuel doesn’t come in canisters.

Oops. Flare-up.

However, liquid-fueled stoves have downsides. They are less convenient, as they usually require priming and can do a lot of flaring up before they settle down to business. They can be somewhat noisy, like my old Svea 123 that I’ve had for decades, but it’s a nice little putter, which I am told sounds like a very small V1 rocket. Probably not very comforting to someone who lived through WWII in London, but I like it.

Many of these stoves have interchangeable jets that allow you to use different fuels such as automotive fuel or kerosene. If you don’t change the jet, they’ll smoke like an Italian movie star and eventually clog until they’re cleaned out.

If you are considering air travel, your stove must be whistle-clean. A friend of mine who went backpacking in Tibet wanted to take his stove with him but was having trouble getting it clean enough for the airlines. I told him something like, “Look dude. If you can afford airline tickets to Kathmandu, you can afford a new stove. Make sure it burns kerosene and donate it to the locals when you come home.”

The biggest disadvantage is pollution—a very small amount of white gas or kerosene can pollute a lot of water (10,000 gallons according to the Leave No Trace people), so if you’re filling your stove on a sandbar and you spill a few tablespoons of fuel, you’ve just polluted thousands of gallons of water. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use liquid fuel stoves, they just require more care.

The Trangia Methanol Stove

Advantages: Simple. Safe. Dead quiet. Use non-petroleum based fuel.
Disadvantages: Lower heat output. Less control over heat. Fuel is less convenient and can melt your Swiss Army Knife handle.

There is one liquid stove that isn’t conventional, for fuel or for function: the Trangia stove. A Swedish stove that burns methanol, also known as wood alcohol, it’s very fuel-efficient. The Trangia is very stable and self-contained and can be used safely in areas where a gas stove may not work. It functions by burning alcohol in a small wicked cup, sort of like a Sterno but with more efficiency. It has one small vice, and that is it can take two to three times longer to boil water, as methanol is not loaded with the BTUs that you find in white gas or kerosene. That said, you just have to alter your camp set-up routine—get out the stove and light it up, and when you’re done setting up your tent, you’ve got your water boiling.

Fuel is usually obtained at a pharmacy if you want the highest quality methanol. If you have a friend who’s a chemist at the local college, even better. However, the methanol is tough on plastic. Spill it on some plastics and they melt or at least get very sticky.

The nicest thing about the Trangia stove is its quiet nature. Sitting on a sand bar on the Wisconsin River, I’ve heard herons hunting frogs in the shallows a hundred yards away, and the only sign of a boiling kettle was the lid rattling when the water was ready for tea. That’s nice. And since methanol is a wood alcohol, it’s a renewable resource. Bueno.

Another great feature about alcohol stoves is the safety factor. A spilled stove is easily doused with water (try that with gasoline–nope). My son used one in Boy Scouts and the leaders loved it.

Canister Stoves

Advantages: Smaller. Super-convenient. Lightweight. No priming or flare-ups. Best control of heat for baking, simmering, or frying.
Disadvantages: Fuel is more costly and less available. Canisters must be packed out and you can’t fly with them. Less performance in colder temperatures.

These little beasts have really come into their own in the last few years. Ultralight freaks and backpackers drool at the tiny little titanium stoves from manufacturers such as MSR, Primus, Snowpeak, etc. They’re fast and easy to use, setting up in moments and burning seconds later.

These stoves are more popular now as the fuel mixture has been altered, using a hotter-burning propane-butane combination. They light more easily, and they work better at colder temperatures than the old straight butane stoves.

MSR Windpro, a favorite for precision.

The downsides are considerable for the traveler. Compressed gas cannot be transported on aircraft. If you try to sneak them through the checked baggage, prepare for a very hefty fine and a visit to the little windowless room at the airport. No kidding. And it’s a dumb idea anyway. Also, finding the proper canisters when you arrive at your destination can be tricky. If you’re driving, no problem. If you’re flying, problem.

They’re also expensive to operate over a long trip. If all you do is boil water, no worries: the cost differential is negligible. If you’re cooking beans and rice, that’s one expensive pot of flatulence. You also will have to pack out the canisters, which on a long wilderness trip is a consideration.

Whitney doesn't burn the eggs!

Other than that, they’re wonderful. A very controllable flame means cooking non-blackened eggs is possible. If you bake with one of the new stove-top ovens, then a canister stove is definitely worth its keep. They are also safer, especially if you’re cooking in your tent vestibule (not your tent).

So Which One Do I Buy?

Optimus (Svea) 123R. 38 years old.

Ah, that’s not so easy. I have a bunch of stoves…an old Svea 123 (the pretty brass stove shown above that has served me since teenage years), an MSR Dragonfly liquid fuel stove for kayak camping, and a baby Snowpeak that I use for backpacking. My Trangia I use mostly for solo canoe trips where I want peace and quiet. I have an Optimus 111 that is a beast–the only portable stove that can boil a big pot of spaghetti for a group of eight without using a sundial to measure boil times. Then there are my collectibles brought back from a stove coma. They’re beautiful, and they work.

An Optimus 8R and 111B.

There aren’t really any bad answers, just compromises. Decide what you’re going to do first, and then choose a stove that matches your needs. Just like shoes, no size fits all, and people have more than one. If you’re going to start collecting things, you couldn’t do much worse than stoves, as they are relatively inexpensive and a lot of fun.

Advantages: Collecting stoves is a cheap hobby and a lot of fun.
Disadvantages: None that I can think of.

Years ago a friend of mine came over to the house for dinner, and we got to chatting about gear. Before too long the picnic table on the porch was humming, and the wives disappeared as the methanol, propane, and white gas flowed like whiskey. It was what my wife calls a CGM (Classic Guy Moment) when she overheard us discussing the virtues of priming paste vs. alcohol in a dropper bottle.

We ended up spending a few hours puttering around with different stoves, timing water boiling, and just enjoying the blue flames reflecting on the screens of the porch.

CGM, indeed.

P.S. Ultralight tablet-burning stoves are really cool and really light. I think they’re appropriate back-up stoves, but I consider them to be in a different class. Just my opinion. Your mileage my vary.

Disaster Relief: How to Get Hands-On and Volunteer

A Manly Guest Contributor — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:23:39 +0000

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Jeff More.

How many of us have watched the footage of recent disasters unfolding, wishing we could drop everything, pack our bags, and head down to Joplin/Haiti/Japan/Turkey to spend some time helping out with the recovery efforts?

Then reality sets in. You don’t know how to get there, where you would stay, and what you would do once you arrived. So you stay home, days pass, and that gnawing feeling of wanting to do something subsides. Besides, what could you have done anyway?

But it’s really not so outlandish an idea. If you’re tired of rationalizing away the desire to pitch in somehow, the good news is that it is very possible for us regular guys to get involved in disaster relief efforts. It simply requires some advance planning.

Find an Organization

The key thing to sort out is finding an organization to work with that would be a good fit for you. In my opinion, this is the toughest part, much more so than finding the time and money to go.

Where to look? If you are involved in some charitable or religious organization, I would start by asking around there. Chances are you know someone who knows someone. In my case, I have been a reservist for Hope Force International for four years and found out about them when my former roommate’s church was hosting a training session. Ask your friends who have served as missionaries or non-profit workers in developing countries, as these folks sometimes cross paths with relief organizations.

If you are not the religious type, fear not, as there are secular organizations involved in disaster response, oftentimes made up of professionals in certain fields, such as Doctors Without Borders, for example. Another is Team Rubicon, formed when its founder, Jake Wood, a USMC combat veteran, posted on his Facebook wall after the 2010 Haiti quake that he was assembling a team to head down there. If you are a veteran, I strongly encourage you to contact them. And if you find a faith-based organization that piques your interest, give them a call as some do not require you to be an adherent of their beliefs to be a member.

Disaster relief organizations are flooded with calls when the footage is piped into your television, but simply calling them up in the heat of the moment doesn’t mean you’ll get sent just like that. Before you go, many require you to go through a training session or at least several meetings to get everyone on the same sheet of music, as it were. Do your homework now during peacetime and get your ducks in a row.

Relevant Skills in a Disaster Zone

Sometimes there are only so many slots available immediately post-disaster until a logistical foothold of sorts can be established and the non-profits can bring in the just-as-motivated but lesser-skilled volunteers. Immediately following a natural disaster, hotels will be packed with newly-homeless residents and mission critical government personnel. To put it bluntly, you should be able to offer something to justify your consumption of limited resources.

Think ahead about the skills you wish you could have, or as Steve Kamb of Nerd Fitness put it in his fantastic article, How to Level Up in the Game of Life: Determine your Level 50, and take intermediate steps to build those skills.

For example, medical professionals such as nurses are often towards the top of the list to deploy if there are limited seats, so earlier this year I signed up for a Wilderness First Aid (WFA) course through the National Outdoor Leadership School to level up my healer skill tree. I would like to become Wilderness First Responder (WFR) certified eventually, but WFA is a respectable intermediate step.

If you have not spent a night away from the comfort of a soft, warm bed and have little/no outdoor skills to speak of, take up backpacking. It is a great way to learn self-reliance in a relaxed and recreational setting. Start building a bug-out-bag. If you can’t take care of yourself, how are you going to help someone else? Put your oxygen mask on first before assisting others.

Bryan Black of ITS Tactical has a great article and accompanying podcast on the Top Ten Tactical Skill-Sets for the Common Man, some of which are particularly useful in disaster areas. These skills take practice, but as the Japanese proverb goes, “Practice until it becomes boring, then practice until it becomes beautiful.”

All this said, don’t write yourself off if you don’t have any sweet skills. My intention is not to tread into “everyone gets a trophy for playing” territory, but you might have a card up your sleeve that will come in handy since unexpected needs have a tendency to arise in disaster areas. For example, your experience working in a clothing store at the mall will be very handy in sorting the flood of incoming clothing donations.

Awesome man-skills are great to have, but I would venture to say it is more important to be empathetic. If you are going to lecture someone that they are fools for living in a flood/wildfire/earthquake/tsunami-prone area in the first place, disaster response work probably isn’t for you. Don’t strut around thinking that that locals owe you anything because you came all the way to help them. They are grateful, but they might have too much on their plate at the moment to communicate it.

Be flexible and fluid, and don’t take things personally if someone snaps at you or says something that rubs you the wrong way while they’re under stress. It sounds like a small thing, and you may think you’d be above such pettiness, but trust me, it is different once you are in the field.

Even if you suck at the first skills that come to mind for this kind of work, such as construction (I am terrible at it and have only really done demolition work…apparently I am better at destroying than creating) the important thing is to be willing to work hard, work well with others, be adaptable, and most importantly, show up. I would rather have a noob with a heart on my team than a badass who has not a shred of empathy. Best case scenario, they will have both The Heart and the Fist (shameless plug for my favorite book of 2010).

Working Around the Roadblocks of Time and Money

Then there are the big issues of time and money, but they are not always the barriers we make them out to be. Don’t just glance at your checking account and vacation days saved up, think you don’t have enough, and tell yourself no without giving it an honest shot first. Being resourceful will tilt things in your favor.

Time

During Hurricane Katrina, I was a recent-ish college graduate and worked part-time which meant I only accrued vacation hours at a fraction of the rate my full-time coworkers did. Word got around of me soon going to New Orleans, and my coworkers, with no solicitation on my part, offered to donate their vacation hours to me in the event I did not have enough. People are more compassionate and generous than you might think—the important thing is to ask, but sometimes they will offer before you can!

Be honest with yourself. If you have the vacation hours but don’t want to give them up because you had your heart set on that Alaskan cruise or annual fishing trip with your buddies, no one is going to fault you for it. We are all in different places and life stages.

While you may imagine yourself jetting off to places like Haiti and Japan, much of relief work is domestic. There are many more logistical hurdles going internationally, such as the language barrier and waiting for foreign governments to give international aid workers the green light to operate. The less publicized (flooding in Vermont and Tennessee in 2011, hello?) operations still require able and willing volunteers.

So while you may not be getting any new stamps in your passport (you have one, don’t you?), domestic relief operations have the upside of being considerably more flexible; my two climbing buddies and I made our third trip to New Orleans the work week of a three day weekend. That’s just four vacation days spent for nine days in New Orleans.

Money

If money is a problem, try raising support. Social media is handy for getting the word out. With growing skepticism and distrust of large organizations, folks might be willing to donate money personally towards your airfare or gas, instead of texting $10 to a big name organization where they have no visibility of what their cash is being used for.

You could start simply by sending a letter soliciting financial support, similar to what Christian missionaries do. If you’re a gifted musician, put on a living room concert and tell folks the admission will be used to fund your trip. I have had airline rewards mileage donated to my teams. Maybe you know someone who works for a hotel chain that can hook you up with a discount. A friend of mine in Tennessee offered my team his daughter’s pickup truck to use to drive to Alabama in order to save us from renting a vehicle. At the very least, you could make a savings goal in your savings account to automatically chip in a little bit at a time every time you get a paycheck.

If you’re waiting for the planets to align, chances are you’ll never get anywhere. Be creative, hustle, and put yourself out there. Folks want to be involved in good causes and are often willing to support you. Hint: people generally respond with the vibe you give out, so hopefully you are a charitable person to begin with.

What to Do Until Your Callout

Hopefully in a few months you will be all signed on as a reservist with an organization you feel confident deploying with. What to do in the meantime? Serve locally.

Some folks I know stay up with their construction skills by going on home-building trips across the Mexican border. Food banks will give you experience serving the masses in a volunteer-run kitchen—you might not see them on the news, but food service is a sizeable part of what volunteers do in disaster areas. Any way to hone your skill-sets for your next disaster relief deployment and serve the less fortunate around you at the same time is a win-win as far as I’m concerned.

If you serve or have served with an organization that conducts disaster relief, please let us know your experiences as to help others with their search. I would personally love to hear your stories as well.

_________________________________

Jeff More works and resides in Los Angeles, where the four seasons are mudslides, earthquakes, riots, and wildfires. He is an avid shooter of both firearms and camera, and celebrates his American heritage by playing the 5-string banjo. Check out his website at www.skunkabilly.com.

How to Make an Old-Time Radio Into an Mp3 Player Speaker

Brett & Kate McKay — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 20:16:43 +0000

I love old-time radios. They’re sturdy and good-looking. And there’s a reason for that. Back in the day appliances were considered pieces of home furniture, so a lot of thought and care went into their design. People wanted something that not only played Glenn Miller, but that also went well with their home’s traditional decor. The result was marvelous pieces of technology encased in handsome wood and fabric.

A few months ago, I inherited my grandpa’s old 1940s Philco radio. It’s positively manly looking. It had a few dings in the wood, but it looked fantastic sitting on my desk. It still worked, but only played AM radio. I thought it was a shame that it didn’t get much use except as decoration. So I had a thought.

“Would it be possible to mod my radio so that I could play music from my iPod on it?”

To answer my question, I called up my electrical engineer brother-in-law, Ryan Davis. His response? “Of course!”

My grandpa's old Philco modded so I can use my iPhone with it.

I headed over to his electrical engineering laboratory in his house with my radio in tow, and he fixed me up. Now I have an audio device with 1940s charm and 21st century technology.

I figured a lot of AoM readers would want something similar in their home or office, so I asked Ryan if he’d help me create a tutorial so you all could make your own mp3-playing old-time radio too. Ryan was happy to oblige.

Two Ways of Modding: The Easy Way and the Hard Way

There are two ways you can go about modding an old radio so you can connect your iPod to it. One approach is to add an audio input right into the old tube amplifier. This mod is nice because your iPod music gets that warm, vintage tube amp sound, and you can still maintain your radio’s radio capability. This is how Ryan modded my grandpa’s old Philco radio.

The problem with this approach is that it’s really difficult to do for the average Joe. First, you have to find a radio that still has a working tube amp, which can be hard and makes the radio more expensive. You can find plenty of radios with working speakers, just not a working tube amplifier.

Second, you have to do some complex rewiring on the radio to add the audio input. Your first step is to find the radio’s electrical schematic online. That’s the easy part. There’s a great site that has all the schematics for old-time radios. The hard part is knowing how to read the schematic so you know where to add a new audio input. This takes some skill and know-how. When Ryan worked on my grandpa’s radio, he tried explaining what we needed to do to make the change. It went completely over my head. Of course, I acted like I knew exactly what he was talking about (“Oh, yeah. Of course you need to put a new transistor in the flux capacitor. It’s so obvious…”).

With that said, if there’s enough interest in seeing how to mod an old radio into an iPod speaker this way, Ryan said he’d be happy to demonstrate how to do it in a future post.

The second approach is to bypass the existing tube amp altogether by adding a new, smaller, and more modern amplifier to the radio and connecting it to the radio’s existing speaker. This way is much easier because you don’t need to know how to read complicated electrical schematics. You also don’t need a working radio. As long as your radio has a working speaker, you’re golden. You can even use a radio with a broken speaker. Just buy a new 2″ speaker for $4 and replace the old speaker in a snap.

Today, we’re showing you how to mod your old radio using the easy approach. It took Ryan and I less than 30 minutes to complete this project. If you’re new to electrical tinkering, it may take you a bit longer. But I’m not kidding when I say this: if you’ve never done any type of electrical projects, you can do this. It’s the perfect weekend project to work on with the kiddos.

Ready to get started? Let’s do this!

Gather Supplies

An Old-time Radio

The most important part! The best place to get them are antique stores, flea markets, or yard sales. You can find them on eBay, but they’re WAY overpriced. Even broken radios on eBay go for about $60-70. And by broken I mean it doesn’t work, and it’s missing half of the wooden cabinet. I went to the local flea market last weekend and spotted several nice cathedral radios in great shape for $20-$30.

I picked up this old Farnsworth radio at a local antique store for about $30. The outside is in pretty good condition, but it doesn’t power up. That’s common with old radios, but it’s okay. The only part we need to work is the speaker. Usually when old radios are burnt out, the speaker still works fine. So if you find a nice-looking vintage radio that doesn’t work, buy it. It will work for our project.

Important Note: Commenter J.W. Koebel brought to our attention that if you want to use the radio’s original speaker like we do in this project , the speaker needs to be a permanent magnet speaker. Radios from about the mid-1940s and on should have permanent magnet speakers. Earlier radios used electrodynamic speakers. Our amp won’t work with electrodynamic speakers.

How do you know if your old-time radio has permanent magnet speakers? Check the back of the speaker. If it has 2 or 3 wires going to the speaker, it’s a permanent magnet speaker.

If you decide to use an older radio that lacks a permanent magnet speaker, you can still do this project. You’ll just need to pull out that speaker and replace it with a permanent magnet speaker. It’s not difficult. Ryan sells a 2″ speaker on his site for $4. Pick one up when you buy the amp.

Amplifier

Ryan sells these on his site. Ryan used his electrical engineering skills and designed these amps specifically for vintage radio mods. They should work with most types of old radios. You can buy the amps pre-built for $26. Select “Pre-built kit” when you check out. If you’re feeling particularly handy, you can buy the kit and put the amp together yourself. The unassembled kit is $20. And of course if you’re super handy with electronics, you can experiment with designing your own amp.

12 Volt Power Supply

You might have one lying around the house. If not, pick one up at Radio Shack.

Soldering Iron

22 Gauge Copper Strand Wire

1/8″ (3.5 mm) Audio Cable

We’ll plug one end into our iPod or other audio source and the other end into our amplifier.

Mod Your Old-Time Radio

We have our supplies. Time to get to work. Keep in mind that every old-time radio is different. How this Farnsworth radio looks on the inside will be different from how your Philco or Zenith looks on the inside. However, all old radios pretty much work the same way, so the steps below should work for your radio. Just know that you may need to use your noodle a bit to find the analogous parts on your radio.

Remove Radio From Cabinet

Unscrew the back and remove.

There's the radio. We're going to be taking that out so we can do some modding.

The radio is screwed into the bottom of the wood cabinet. So we need to remove all those screws to remove the radio.

We also need to remove the knobs to slide the radio out.

Alright. Remove the radio. You might have a bunch of crud inside your radio and among the parts. Just clean it up as best you can.

Tuner, speaker, tube amp. Let's get to work modding this bad boy.

Disconnect Old Wire Speakers

Disconnect the old speaker wires from the speaker's solder terminals. Here they are on our radio.

Use your soldering iron to disconnect the old wire from the speaker's soldering terminals.

Connect New Speaker Wire

Get your new wire ready.

Strip back a bit of the insulation and put some solder on the new wire so it's ready to be connected to the speaker.

Connect the new wire to the speaker soldering terminal. Here's Ryan connecting the first new line of wire to the speaker. After you solder the wire to the speaker input, cut it so it's long enough to reach the side of the radio cabinet.

Now for the second wire. Strip back the insulation a bit. Add some solder to the end.

Soldering second wire to second speaker solder terminal. After you've connected the new wire, cut it so it's long enough to reach the side of the inside of the cabinet. We're not connecting any wire to that middle solder terminal. It doesn't do anything. We're done adding new speaker wires.

Remove Capacitor From Potentiometer

We want to be able to control the volume with the radio’s volume knob. To do that we need to run some new wire from the volume knob to the new amp. Here’s how to do it.

Find the volume knob on the radio. Look behind it. See that black round thing? That right there is called a potentiometer, or pot for short. It controls the volume. See that orange thing sticking out from the pot? That's a capacitor. We need to remove that so we can connect some new wire for our new amp.

Use your soldering iron to remove the capacitor from the pot. Here's what the pot looks like sans capacitor.

Add New Volume Wire to Volume Knob (or Pot)

See those three soldering terminals on the pot? That's where we're going to connect the new wire.

Take some new wire, pull back the insulation a bit, and add some solder to it.

Add new wire to each of the three solder terminals.

Finished adding new wires to pot soldering terminals. A beautiful sight. Remember to cut each wire so it's long enough to reach the inside side of the radio cabinet.

Ryan suggests making the middle wire a little longer than the other two. When we connect the wires into the amp, we need to make sure the wire from the middle soldering terminal on the pot connects with the middle screw terminal on the amp. Making the middle wire longer than the other two wires makes it easier to figure out which wire is the middle wire.

We threaded the volume wires through a hole we found in the tube amplifier so we could make it to the new amp. Keeps things tidy.

Connect Wires to New Amp

Find the pot screw terminal on the amp. It's the little black thing with three holes in it and three screws on top. Connect the middle wire from the pot to the middle screw terminal on the amp, like so.

Connect the other two wires from the pot into the two outside screw terminals on the amp.

When you test out your radio, if you notice that the volume gets softer when you turn it up, you need to switch the two outside wires in the pot terminals on the amp. No biggie. Just unscrew them, make the switch, and screw down the wires again.

Connect the speaker wires into the speaker amp terminal. It doesn't matter which wire goes into which terminal. All the wires are connected! We're almost done!

Re-assemble Radio

Put the radio back into cabinet. Make sure to put the knobs back on.

Put the screws back in the bottom.

Mount Amp Inside Radio Cabinet

Sticky tape is your friend.

Put some sticky tape on the back of the amp.

Mount the amp on the inside of the cabinet.

Plug-in Your Power Cable and Audio Source and Play!

Plug-in your power and audio cable.

Enjoy having your modern music play from an old-time radio!

Here’s a video of our old-time radio in action: