Restoring an RCA Model AR-1264 Theremin (continued)

David A. Newton (email: danewton@hevanet.com) of Portland, Oregon, is in the process of restoring his family's 1929 vintage RCA Theremin. Since sharing his original photos with us, David has since made great progress in the restoration process.

Please note that this page includes heavy graphic content and may take a few minutes to load. If you love the RCA Theremin as much as I do, you'll find it well worth the wait.

Inside a theremin...

This image shows the "guts" of the theremin during restoration.

David writes: Here's everything laid out on the work bench. Those little white spots on the upper side of the power supply chassis are tags that I placed on the leads to the can that I removed. I was going to be sure that everything went back where it came from. Good shot of the GE 1201 speaker.

Electronics...

This is the volume control coil. The coil, bottom right, is the volume control oscillator coil. This was the cause of all the trouble.

This is the coil. Note the missing half inch of winding.

Note: The red splotch on this picture is bleed-through from a magic marker used to number the backs of the photos.

This is the pitch antenna after it came apart. This antenna is actuall made up of 4 pieces. They did things the hard way in those days.

The finished product. Ready to go and looking for a gig!

The finished cabinet

...and more of the same...