I am a new user and i have a philco 42-390 that has been in family for many years.I have a friend looking for new button and etc and he tells me i can no longer receive FM on this radio.He says the freqency is not used any more although this radio came with fm.Is there any way to alter this radio to receive todays Fm stations.I would love to use this radio for every day use if possible.Would appreciate any help I could get.
thanks

One way would be to use an external FM tuner feeding into a small AM transmitter. Or if your radio has a phonograph input, then you could just plug the audio output from an external FM tuner into that.

Modifying the set to work on the modern FM band is not something that is easy to do.

BTW, it is not allowed to post the same question in different catagories.

The Philco line of FM radios for 1942 were not very good performers (on FM) compared to the competition even when brand new. Philco refused to sign up for an Armstrong license and made their FM radios without limiters. (Though, rumor has it they used a somewhat self-limiting discriminator) and the 42-390 was a low-end model.

So, even converting it to modern FM it would be a very poor FM radio. There are ways to attach a converter to the antenna terminals to get it to receive modern FM, but the best choice would be as Dennis mentioned and get a modern FM tuner. If the 42-380 has an aux input (Phono or "Television sound" input) then this will be easy.

Fairly common are the Pilot T-601 tuners, or the Howard 482 or even the Meissner 8C are all tuners available just after WWII to bring modern FM to older or non-FM radios.

The old FM band tunes 42-50 MHz while the modern band is 88-108 MHz.
The Philco dial is probably in "Channels" 21-99 Just add a 4 and move the decimal over one place.

42.1 to 49.9 MHz

-Steve

There is a good thread over at videokarma on this that has some interesting tricks to make a prewar set work with postwar FM.
http://www.videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=251642

Tom C.

It is quite do-able to make converters to allow the FM radio to tune the new FM band without ANY modification to the old FM radio.
Though, it will take significant time and effort to build a converter. I chose to make one out of an old turret TV tuner which lends itself to the task very well.

3 strips will need to be modified to cover the full FM band as the old one is 8 MHz wide while the new one is 20 MHz wide.

Of course, powering the tuner and providing AGC bias as well as proper AFC bias if necessary is another task in and of itself.

Once done, it would provide a converter capable of allowing any pre-war FM radio to tune the new band.
If you collect them (as I do) it is well worth the effort.

Here is a video of mine in operation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_K41tHhHgM

-Steve

I agree with the above remarks, except that I have a Philco 42-395 with the same early FM band (42.1 to 49.9 MC). It shouldn't receive modern FM, but the radio doesn't know that, so it does anyway. This is without modifications I can get reception on the upper end of the dial up to about say 93-94 MC fairly strong. Probably this is a harmonic. I don't know where you are in restoration, but after recaping and alignment you may well get some of the lower end of the modern FM dial without dong any modifications whatever.

John

John, yes, it is working off a second harmonic of the local oscillator. Mike's radio may work just as well. Just add a good outdoor FM antenna.

There was at least one FM converter that worked on this principle offered just after the war. It simply had an input coil broadly tuned to 100 MHz, coupled to a (new for the day) germanium diode which then connected to a broadly tuned coil at 45 MHz.

It relied on local oscillator leakage from the FM radio to make the conversion. The only modification required to the radio was to adjust the LO to tune a slightly different range. As this process doubled the tuning range, it allowed tuning of 16 MHz of the new band rather than just 8 MHz.

Not all Pre-war FM radios would work with this principle. Those with RF amps and good sheilding won't have enough leakage to function.

-Steve