EICO 753
TRANSCEIVER
This Eico 753 transceiver was purchased from a fellow Ham, who was
"thinning the herd", he wasn't sure
as to its operating condition, but the unit was assembled at the Eico
factory, and not purchased as a Kit!
I figured, what the heck, can't be too much to bringing it back to life
and putting it on the air, so I bought
it.
Now, as for the Eico 753, I have heard, radio myths and old wives
tales about the "753", some folks call
it the "7 drifty 3". I give radios of this vintage a fair chance to
prove their worth, so ignoring the consensus
that these rigs aren't worth anything, I set out to see what the REAL
story was.
First of all, having once worked as a service tech, and design
engineer at "Heathkit" I am VERY AWARE,
of the fact that "not everyone should be allowed to build a kit", it
takes time and patience and above all, you
absolutly can NOT be color blind. Now on to my 753 resurrections!
First a picture of this particular Eico 753:
assembled unit. Which means it went through test and "actually" worked per the manufacturers specs
when it left there. Well in that case, a reasonable assumption is, then it has just had a failure of a working
component, and so trouble shooting the unit should discover the problem.
Connected it to the 751 AC power supply, and turned it on, no audio, meter pegged, and in cw no relay
action. Reading the manual and the schematic took me to the 7199 TR-relay switching section, so I pulled
the tube, put it in the tester and sure enough, bad tube! I might mention the unit was set up with a wattmeter
and dummy load on the antenna connector. This is to ensure that if it comes up in transmit mode (hung) it will
at least have a load on it, and that is always a good indicator of what parts of the rig are working.
Replacing the 7199, brought the receiver back to life, so I did a check of the alignment, this unit is a Tri-Bander
and operates on 80-40-20 meters, sideband is LSB on 80/40, and USB on 20 meters. It also has CW ability
on all three bands, as well as AM operation. I used my 8640B signal generator, to verify the alignment of the
receiver section. I found it to be right on the money frequency wise. The IF stages were tweaked to bring them
into full spec operation also. So take a break, get some coffee and come back for round two, the transmit section.
Back to EICO page.