This is Mike Clark's workbench. Mike has only been working on radios for just over a year now. Mike's been learnig from his father. Old radios have been his hobby for over 45 years. Mike's collection is slowly growing. He's rebuilt four basket cases, two Zenith consoles and two Phico table radios, an Atwater Kent and a few others. He's 39 and really enjoying the Hobby.

Tim Sullivan gets my prize for the neatest workbench to date. He rates two photos because he has two workbenches, too. He must have been on vacation when he took these photos, because he has lots of radios waiting to be worked on...

Hi Guys, this is my hobby work bench. Jacques Schalckens in Florida.

This is Paulo Moniz from Portugal with his workbench.

This is Peter Bertini's workbench! I spliced his two photos together to show all this stuff in one photo. From left: Tool cart with spectrum analyzer, Boonton 102F signal generator, Cushman CSM50A service montor. Rotary parts storage cabinet system for small parts (resistors, caps, etc.) The shop's Tek 465 scope is on its cart. Moving right is a full 8' x 4' bench. High and low voltage variable AC and DC supplies, two Clemens SG-1 signal generators, Heath IM-13 bench VTVM, backup Tek scope, ultrasonic tank cleaner, various RF wattmeters and 50-ohm loads, Boonton RF millivoltmeter and Boonton RF microwattmeter, signal tracers (including a Hickok Indicating Traceometer undergoing restoration), Hickok tube tester (under bench), HP 500 MHz counter, Fluke 1 GHz counter with high stability TXCO option. Lot's of other misc. equipment. Start of Ham Radio station can be seen at far right.

Here is Brian Hill's workbench. No, this is not his entire collection. But you can sure tell that he is busy here.

From his workbench in Santa Catarina, Brasil, Joacir da Silva e Souza tends to his collection of radios manufactured in Brasil.

Chuck Braun has two workshops (the lucky dog). One is in his garage, used during the warm months. He keeps most of the grungier consoles there, and a lot of table sets and chassis on shelves. But the winter workshop he's showing is in the basement, with a removable table top on top of a bar. It's nice because Chuck can work on either side of a radio on the bench. Plus, all his test equipment, soldering and desoldering gear, heat gun, shrink tubing and tools stores nicely in the bar. He's in one corner of the basement, which is a family room. So, Chuck can talk to his wife when she's watching TV or doing laundry. The only problem- the cat likes to jump on the bench and play with everything! [F.W. note: I told Chuck I was going to make a joke about his being the only workbench so far with a wet bar, and he fessed up about the bottle of Bourbon he keeps handy for those reeeeally tough radios!]

Here are Stan Saeger's workbench and some of the radios waiting to be worked on. Got some pretty metal sets there, too!

These are pictures of Ryan Meldahl's bench in between repairs. The bench has a regulated 110VAC power strip and a separate outlet with a built in variac, an current and line voltage meter. Above the bench are some of most often needed test equipment and drawers of most often needed capacitors, resistors and other misc parts. In the second picture in an other workbench Ryan recently built with a slide out drawer for tube testers; this keeps the tube testers out of the way when they are not needed. Also there is space for more test equipment and other drawers for more supplies.

This is Keith Park's workbench. I like it because it has a Zenith on it. Looks like a busy time on the Park bench! Keith has radios for sale at Keith Park's Radio Attic.

This is Steve Strapach and his workbench. Steve was a member of the Arizona Antique Radio Club for about eight years, prior to moving to Alabama this past summer. [just to be closer to the Radio Attic!--F.W.] He's also a member of AWA.

This is Paul Wennekes' workbench. Paul lives in the Netherlands, so I'll let him tell you about his bench himself:

"Ik zag de foto's van de werkplaatsen. Ik wou mijn foto ook toevoeggen. Dit is mijn werkplaats in beetgumermolen (friesland). Groeten van paul uit Nederland."

Tom Albrecht's workshop is in its very own building... DROOL! Tom says, "The workshop building itself was a building project of mine a couple of years ago. These pictures are a few years old now, and I admit it is a bit more cluttered than when I took the pictures."

Here's Ross Hochstrasser at his bench working on a Telefunken Hymnus console chassis. Ross is a member of the New England Antique Radio Club (NEARC). His interests are European radios, Boatanchors and he's also an amateur radio operator W1EKG.

Brian Stead says, "OK we're all nuts but somebody is got to have this much fun! I think my shop is at it's cleanest, take note the walls never got painted but it's my room and I like it that way!! The picture with me in it is my office and the other are my shop on the second floor.. Luckily my wife is also a tech so I guess you guys could figure that the entire house has wires and things all around. My shop has equipment to fix electronics from the 20s to now. Our brains are full of vacuum tubes right through to data communication networks and fiber optics. OK, keep on fixing up them good old sets, where the static sounds like music to our ears!"

Here is Paul Shinn's work area. At upper left is the file cabinet full of docs and the computer with all the Sam's and Rider's on the hard drive (about 3 Gigs worth of info). The PC also runs circuit board software for plotting traces on boards for etching. The toolboxes are sitting on the floor since Paul was using the wheeled cart to steady the camera for the photo. The workbench (right) has parts in drawers underneath and some test gear on the floor below it. Equipment across the top shelf are variac, scanner, waveform generator, variable power supply, Weller soldering iron, light, ECG cap meter, Fluke meter, IFR 1200 Super S service monitor. On the bench is the IFR AM/FM 1500 Service monitor and another Fluke meter. The cabinet next to the bench contains the chemicals and some other gear. On top is the distortion analyzer and some other stuff. Lower left is some of the huge parts inventory. This shows the tube section. Not shown are the drafting table with the plotter on it for making computer drawn circuit boards. Paul has some working-like-new radios for sale at Paul's Radio Attic.

Here's a montage of Tim Guy's work bench. On the left you can see two pickup winders he built; Tim makes guitar pickups and does rewinds on the guitar pickups. He rewound a push pull output transformer for a Silvertone console radio on the pickup winder; it works great! Also in the photo is a four tube matcher / variac / bias meter in an oak cabinet he built. It's a little heavy but it will put out 550 VDC and up to -75 volts for bias; he added jumpers to the thing so he can also use it as a transformer substitute rig. And a Tek 465M oscilloscope. On the right side of the bench is an oak box that houses a variac with an AC meter, an amp meter and an isolation transformer. You can also see an RCA T4-9A radio that Tim just finished, and it is running in the photo. Tim does a lot of guitar amp work, recapping and fine tuning old tube amps.

This is Louis deGonzague's workbench. He said this ia as organized as it gets. [It looks organized to ME! -- F.W.]

Sylvain Vanier's workbench is SO BIG that he had to splice two photographs together to take it all in!

Andreas Kuhn says, "I found the Radio Attic web site (very interesting site). I'm repairing radios and reel-to-reel machines (it's my hobby not professional). So here's my workbench, located in Switzerland, ZIP 3700, Spiez (close to Interlaken)."

This is Joe D'Ambra's repair shop. He has been repairing radios since 1949. He worked at RCA service Co. from 1960 until he retired in 1995. The TV monitors were used for the repair of VCR's, now all history. Joe still repairs radios, amps and phonographs, and loves the work. Notice the timer; it's used to turn off the soldering iron station.

This is Steve Johnson's work bench. Steve says he still has most of the tools and test equipment he had when he was a kid. Steve has a page dedicated to his workbench. Click here to get all the details!

This is Ed Engelken's workbench. The item with the Variac and meter (highlighted) is his most used piece of test gear. It consists of a 5-amp Variac feeding a 320 VA isolation transformer. The isolation transformer output is fed directly to one side of the duplex outlet and through a 100-watt light bulb to the other side of the duplex outlet. The meter reads the output of the lamp side of the outlet. The 100-watt bulb acts as a ballast. Its cold resistance is about 10 ohms; the hot resistance is 144 ohms. The lamp bulb limits the maximum current in the circuit to 0.833 amps. He uses the ballast to power up sets for the first time to limit potential damage if something shorts out. And he doesn't power up sets up without checking them out first! If fact, he usually does a full recap job before powering up an old radio. Once everything is determined to be OK, the direct outlet (without the 100-watt ballast bulb) is used. He also has a 3-amp circuit breaker between the Variac and the isolation transformer. He built this system about 5 or 6 years ago and uses it every day. Ed is Secretary of the Texas Antique Radio Club.