This iconic late ’60s GE clock radio came to the shop with loud, low humming when turned on and no radio reception. That’s a familiar problem! Time for new capacitors. This particular used a 100 uF main filter and several 200-400 uF secondary filter capacitors around the boards, along with three electrolytic coupling capacitors in the signal chain. They were very tired and as shown by the hum had started to short out; if the radio continued to be run with the loud hum it could have been badly damaged so it came in just in time. Some new components later, she’s good as new and sounds surprisingly good for such a small radio. There’s a mystery switch inside, too – do you know what it might control? Read more for more photos of the repair.
RETROVOLTAGE 
Hello:
I remember tagging along with my dad as he bought my mother this radio for Mother’s day at one of Milwaukee’s downtown department stores. It must have been about 1970 – 45 years ago today!
That radio lasted into the 1980’s (two houses later) and was paint spattered and worn looking toward the end of its life. I remember it also as having good tone for a small radio and it picked up the weak FM underground rock station (my mom was an artist) that she listened to at that time. I think this unit has a class A audio output stage which might have been a contributor to its good tone.
I didn’t think this radio had a power transformer. Instead, I thought that the big resistor at the back corner of the cabinet dropped the voltage from 110 to low levels. But maybe I’m wrong.
I think the mystery switch is probably an FM AFC switch that was probably set to AFC ON. There was a slider that said “AM-FM AFC”. Some earlier versions of this radio had switchable AFC, and my guess is that they just used the same circuit board and eliminated the AFC switch on the outside of the cabinet.
Thank you for posting this radio. It brought back some memories. I think it is somewhat significant in that it was one of the last US made GE radios and was part of GE’s “miniature” and “flair” family of radios first introduced around 1963. These were noticeably smaller and lower than the typical radios of the time. They made versions with one speaker, two speakers, FM only, AM only and with and without clocks. The number of cabinet styles and feature combinations over the lifespan of this series was almost endless.
The original Flair series models had a curved cabinet while the miniature series had a more squared off appearance like the radio you fixed.