A Craigs List purchase can be riskier than even Ebay, but I got lucky with this one. No rust or mouse puddles. The brown streak on the left side of the lid channel is dried contact cement. Why it's there is a mystery. If any of you see something that would give you the shivers, please let me know.

The price was $300 including the speaker but then I had to pay about $250 for shipping. I usually drive to the lower 48 every year and its location was along the route and I intended to pick it up along the way. My departure has been delayed to the latter part of August and even though the seller seemed to be a stand up guy, one can never be sure. Anyway, now seeing what I bought, I would have paid $500 if I could have picked it up locally. You may recall that I'm the guy that found the speaker cone trashed. I have another coming and in the meantime I hooked it up to a Pioneer and heard very pleasant audio. Ran it on a variac at 115V for about 2 hours and nothing got so hot that I couldn't touch it.

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That's a nice looking NC183D, but I'll leave it to the more knowledgeable ARF members to give it their official blessing. The only "modification" I made to mine was to clip an office binder clip onto the front edge of the lid so I could open it more easily. (Repurposing office supplies is a specialty of former cubical workers like me. )
-DS

DS,

Did you work in a "Prairie Dog Town"? That's what large work centers with a lot of cubicles with heads popping up and down makes me think of.

That's a good description. It was the very same building, in San Ramon, CA, where "Dilbert" was conceived. And in another repurposing of office supplies, a piece of business card inserted between the binder clip and the lid of your NC183D will prevent scratches/corrosion there.
-DS

Other than being notorious for a cooked power transformer they are a fine radio, the one in yours is the 2nd generation transformer or a later replacement which is much more rugged. There are a few signs that it is a replacement.

You can test it by pulling the rectifier and then bringing it up on a Variac or dim bulb tester while monitoring the AC at the socket. Best replace the two line bypass caps or clip out for now.

Dont even think of plugging the 5U4 in until you replace the filter caps and all paper and electrolytics associated with both audio stages. Then you can fire it up and see if there is any signs of reception; use that as your benchmark.
All those pretty color tubular plastic caps need replacing as well as many resistors that will be out of tolerance. Just do 2-3 caps and their assoiated resistors at a time and then turn on to be sure its still working. Performance should increase in incremental steps but dont stop until its all done.

There are two distinct versions, a 6J5 first audio and a 6SN7, be sure to get the correct schematic. I should have the latter on the PC and the earlier is on BAMA/Edebris. There are also minor changes between the many production runs that are of no real concern.

Have fun.

Carl

Wow, what a beauty!!! Looks like it was well cared for!

Carl,

The power transformer is indeed a replacement. The receiver came with the original manual with a previous owner's call sign written on the front. In it I found a receipt for the transformer dated 1/8/76. It does have the 6SJ7 and 6SN7 installed and on the schematic. My initial inspection showed that C-64 and C-65 had been replaced but I am irritated with my failure to ask the question, when? I know better and I guess I had another piece of luck in that it didn't go up in smoke during its 2 hour run. So, back to the bench.

Thanks for the counsel.

Dick