Emerson Model 543 AC/DC Radio Set

by Donald Sentz
Fall/Winter 2011

My mom obtained this set for me in Alabama, sometime in the

early 1990s, and shipped it to me. There was a horizontal break
in the Bakelite case on the right side, and duct tape residue.
The original speaker had been replaced with another one that was
not physically fastened to the chassis. It had one of its
original knobs but it was missing the shaft mate insert.
I found two other knobs in my junk boxes, one brown and one
black, that look OK. I repainted the grill and installed a
speaker soon after I got the set. I used Whiteout to refill
the Emerson logo on the enclosure. I did not replace any
internal parts except for the electrolytics. The dial
calibration was way off and the set would motorboat at the low
end of the dial. I put the set away, hoping to one day have time
to figure out what was wrong and fix it.
Right after I retired, in the summer of 2010, I performed a
thorough electrical restoration. I changed the speaker yet
again, installed all new capacitors and several new resistors.
The motorboating and dial calibration issues were due to the
I.F. alignment being way off. I realigned the set using my
Heathkit SG-8 signal generator and certain radio stations of

known frequency. Since Bakelite is tricky to repair I used a

single long strip of clear cellophane tape to temporarily
reinforce the break. The set works really great now. It easily
picks up KFBK 1530 in Sacramento at night, from our house on
west side of Los Angeles. Also KERN-1180 in Bakersfield usually
comes in at night pretty good.
Here is a photo detail of the
replacement speaker mounting. I
used the spool from a roll of
Teflon plumbers tape. The
speaker magnet fits nicely inside
the hub of the spool after
stuffing the gap with a piece of
screen window weather-strip. I
used an Exacto knife to drill
the mounting holes in the soft
plastic spool flange. I used two
ceramic standoffs to mount the
spool to the original speaker
bracket. Finally I installed a
stiff wire brace from the top of
the spool flange to the speaker
bracket.

Chassis View Showing New Parts Installed.

During the 2010 work I reverse engineered the circuit to produce
the complete schematic shown below and also on the last page of
this report.

January 7, 2012- I found and downloaded a scan of the Riders

schematic for this set (see next to last page of this report).
There are four minor differences between my sets present wiring
and the Riders diagram;

My set came to me with a 39 ohm resistor installed for R11

instead of the Riders 15 ohm 1 watt part. Also, there was
no series resistor R10 for my pilot light. It is possible
that the original pilot light may have been something other
than a #47, and a repairman may have modified the set for a
#47 pilot light.
During restoration I did not have the Riders diagram, and I
could not figure out why someone had apparently wired pin 4
of the 12SQ7 to the AVC line. This appeared to be a do
nothing connection. Most other sets I have studied tie pin
4 to the cathode, which is also do nothing. Absent
Riders, I chose to connect pin 4 of the 12SQ7 to pin 3
(cathode).
I connected the new 250mmF RF bypass capacitor C13 to B-,
to be consistent with other sets. Riders shows it
connected to chassis. It should not matter which way it is
connected, since C19 connects any RF signals on B- to
chassis. My C19 is .22uF instead of the .02uF of Riders.
My set did not have capacitor C9. The original back cover
was missing from my set. I suspect that C9 may have been on
the original back cover, along with a pair of screw
terminals for the external antenna and ground connections.

July 26, 2013- Four days ago I finally attempted to repair the
break in the cabinet that I mentioned in the 1st paragraph of
this report.
I made an adjustable clamp using two wood lath strips, a piece
of cushioning foam, two pieces of #12 insulated copper wire, and
two machine screws and nuts. I placed the foam underneath the
top strip in order to distribute the compression force and
protect the top of the cabinet. I aligned the top and bottom
edges of the break while tightening the clamp. See Figure 1.

Figure 1: Cabinet Clamped, but the Front, Back and Side Tape
Strips not yet applied
I used #150 grit sandpaper to roughen up the inside of the
cabinet on both sides of the break. I used acetone to wipe the
inside of the cabinet on both sides of the break. I attached
strips of masking tape to the front and back edges of the
cabinet at the break. These tape strips acted as dams to
prevent the liquid epoxy from flowing over the cabinet edges
before it cures. I also applied a strip of clear Scotch tape all
along the break, on the outside of the cabinet. The purpose of
this strip is to contain any epoxy that seeps into the seam of
the break.

For the repair operation I set the cabinet clamp onto two stacks
of books as shown in Figure 2 (I took this picture after the
repair operation, so the tape strips were already removed, and
also I had spread out a newspaper sheet to protect the books and
the table top).

Figure 2: Cabinet in Position for Repair Operation

I then used an old toothbrush to dab on a lamination of Liquid
Wood epoxy (Figure 3) layered with seven 3 x 2 pieces of
Art Paper that is black on one side and white on the other
side. The freshly mixed Liquid Wood is quite runny, so the tape
strip dams are very important to prevent it from flowing over
the cabinet sides.

Figure 3: Abatron LiquidWood Epoxy

I applied a total of seven paper layers, spreading epoxy between
each layer. I did not apply epoxy to the top side of the last
layer. See Figure 4 showing the repair after partial curing.

Figure 4: Partially Cured Repair

I removed the three tape strips about an hour after completing
the repair operation. If you dont wait about an hour the epoxy
might flow over the edge, but if you wait too long the tapes
will stay glued to the cabinet. I used acetone to wipe some
epoxy residue off the outside of the cabinet along the seam of
the break. After one day of curing in position I placed the
cabinet over a 15 watt incandescent light bulb to heat up the
repaired area to about 120 degrees or so. This greatly speeds up
the curing process.
I removed the clamp and reassembled the set after about 10 hours
of elevated temperature cure, spread over three days. The repair
appears to be very rigid and strong. Figure 5 shows the set
after the repair.

Figure 5: Cabinet Repair Completed

THE END