Stella ST108 AB LW + MW 4 valve 1956

This one almost didn't survive and it would have been a shame as I can't find another example. I think it's downfall was the plastic cabinet and hinged base. This type of soft plastic breaks easily and when heavy components are inside it helps the cracking forces generated when dropped. I mean If you are gonna make it smooth as a baby's bum on the outside, it will eventually slip from your grip. That was the fate of this set, I found it in pieces with all valves missing and looking very sad for it'self. Stella a London manufacturer had been around since the mid 1930s making televisions and radios but by 1956 were now owned by Philips
the repair
The hinge had broken off the front along with a portion of the cabinet, I glued the two parts back together and filled missing sections with filler and painted after with some burgundy touch-up paint that came with an old Ford I owned once. I stripped all the brackets speaker chassis front badge and knobs, all push on types.

Lots of straps to hold 7.5 volt and  90 volt batteries and mains cable

The rear chassis badge tells you from it's design that Philips is the builder of this model. Although it's MW and LW reception I think the dial strip for LW had been lost and the MW digits were faded. The MW was sorted with a yellow wax crayon rubbed over the stamped recesses in the cabinet, I found if you use paint it's hard to tidy up around edges afterwards.

Out of the 4 missing valves I had 2 as spares and had to order 2. The sound was also distorted so I replaced the grid coupling capacitor b/w the driver stage and that was found to be leaky (not detectable on meter but failed under load) C19 10nF, I've had a couple of these fail lately in various valve radios. I think it removed the negative bias on the output valve which always needs to be around -7 volts for clear sound.

To made the dial more interesting I added 2 yellow LED's in series with a 47 k resistor across the 90 volt HT rail, fixing them to the ends of the aluminium white tuning back plate, making sure that the fixing didn't interfere with the chassis fitting back into the sockets either side. On socked fixing had broke, but I found the missing bit and glued it in place.

Lights fitted to dial also illuminate carry handle. Wires taped to rear of access plate. I've started using warm or yellow LED's rather that the over bright normal ones, they recall the look of the old incandescent bulbs.

Rear of tuner dial showing the bent over wires from LED's. Make sure to cover all around the soldered connections with Gorilla tape, other tapes tend to fall off when warm.

I've included full service information if needed, I replaced a few high value resistors and adjusted the aerial tuning coil (under hole in plate cover) She was surprisingly sensitive and very low background noise, also this model employs 2 ferroceptors  aerial rods I've not heard of before, a Philips invention no doubt. (see period add)