From Rain City Audio:

German radios are considerably less common than U.S.-made radios from the same model years, but offer excellent performance and very beautiful styling. This Grundig 5060A from 1957 does just that, offering AM Broadcast, two Shortwave, and the FM Broadcast band in a beautiful multi-speaker wood case.

This radio was purchased by its original owner while he was in the service stationed in Germany, and brought back to the United States when he returned home. After a number of years, it started to suffer from some performance problems and was put into storage for the next few decades as he looked for a shop which would be able to give it the restoration it deserved.

Underneath, if it was serviced at all, it was done in Europe. German radios are usually pretty tough to work on due to the way they’re constructed, with parts built in layers and generally needing to work with needle-nose pliers in each hand. This one isn’t the worst I’ve seen, but it is fairly tight under there. However, at least nothing looks burnt-up.

Fortunately, all the tubes tested good, so it was time to replace the components.

Some resistors in the tone network were looking dodgy, so they all ended up replaced as well.

Finally, it was time for a power up attempt. Unfortunately, there was some trouble. It appeared that something damaged the primary of the power supply circuit, including the transformer’s primary and the power switch. The switch, buried deep in the mechanism, was dead and the 110V winding of the multi-tap primary was also dead, offering no continuity and failing to work even when the switch was jumped. This damage could easily have been caused by corrosion and humidity over the years, or could have been damage from a power surge at some point – it’s impossible to say.

Fortunately, this is a multi-voltage radio, and the 220V tap worked perfectly (even though the power switch was still dead). First thing’s first, to finish the rest of the radio, then work on the power circuitry. Alignment was uneventful, although did take multiple passes for the FM dial alignment which was initially off by a wide margin, it ended up coming into adjustment nicely.

Some final checks before the finishing touches:

New power cord, in-line power switch, and new 220V plug for use with a 220V step-up transformer.

Look at that bright and beautiful eye tube!

Quite a few parts came out of this one:

This Grundig cleaned up and sounds fantastic, both over the air on AM and FM, and using an adapter to hook up an external audio source.