Easiest Vintage Radio Bluetooth Conversion

This is a vintage 1951 Admiral radio that I've had for years on display. I cleaned and polished and converted to a bluetooth speaker. The entire project took about 3 hours.

With the evolution of technology, I realized I no longer had to have electronics knowledge to convert this to a bluetooth player. I decided to not re-paint it as its 67 years of war wounds added character to it (and overall it was'nt bad looking at all).

I removed the back by removing two screws. The back had the antenna on the back so I snipped the wire to separate it from the carriage. I easily removed the 3 knobs and tuning diaI from the front of the radio.. Next, I unscrewed the two screws holding the carriage in the radio housing and removed it. Next, I pulled 3 tubes out to access the speaker. I unscrewed two more screws and removed the speaker after snipping the two wires to the speaker. This left me a clear platform for the bluetooth speaker unit. I found this nifty little bluetooth speaker from ihome for $18 on Amazon. It measures a compact 2 3/4" x 2 3/4" x 2 3/4", a perfect cube. It has great sound and holds a charge for a good amount of hours. The next step is to be able to insert it in the radio and be able to access the on / off switch and charging port without the unit moving loosely around inside the reassembled radio.

As can be seen in picture one, the cube fits nicely on the speaker side of the carriage. In this case I used some scrap wood to build a box to fit the speaker into and to hold it securely. On the bottom of the carriage there was an existing hole which I put a wood screw through to secure the wooden box holder tightly to the carriage. I set it so that the ihome speaker unit will be close to the back of the radio to eventually enable easy access to the controls on the speaker.

On most old radios, the back is usually in poor condition, warped, faded or banged up. For my radio I picked up a 1/8 in. x 2 ft. x 4 ft. Project Panel Tempered Hardboard. I templated the back using the radio housing. I cut it using a jigsaw and dry fitted it to make sure it fit within the sides of the radio. I used the old back to figure out where the two screw holes should go to attach the new back for a perfect fit. After I was assured it fit correctly I measured where the rectangle cutout would be needed to access the speaker controls. I was conservative and cut it to a minimum opening needed. I marked it off and used a forstner bit to drill two hole through the hardboard (using a scrap piece of wood behind the hardboard to avoid tearout). I then cut the rectangle using the jigsaw.

Above is a picture and video with sound of the completed project. As you can see this is an easy and great way to convert a radio with minimal effort and a great result. As you can hear in the video, the inserted ihome bluetooth speaker puts out a great sound and the overall result is a great functional conversation piece!