Redditor spyderN8 happened upon a holy grail-level find at their local antique store last year: a 1940s Philco radio. And it cost them less than $50! Either the maker is a champion haggler or American antique shops aren’t quite the racket they are over here in the UK.

The maker had five criteria this project had to fit:

• Keep the general look
• No touchscreen interface – all driven by physical buttons
• Internet connection not required
• Keep the original eight-button selector
• Must be spouse-approved

I guess this last one is because the finished project would be on display at home and janky-looking stuff is not welcome. Keeping the original eight-button selector was a hassle worth powering through, because the maker was able to retain the clunky sound you get when you press the buttons. The video above is a vintage collector’s aural dreamscape.

“Ker-chunk” buttons for the win!

The original radio buttons still made the lovely ker-chunk sounds, but they couldn’t do much else. SpyderN8 found a solution to retain the sound when the old buttons were pressed and operate new buttons behind the scenes to perform the radio station-changing function.

Each of the new buttons is pre-programmed to select a particular radio station running through a computer-based radio scanner. spyderN8 sourced the buttons from renovatedradios.com.

Old tech, new spec

Almost every single GPIO pin on Raspberry Pi 4 is used in this project. A 7.9-inch capacitive touch LCD screen provides an oscilloscope-style display showing the sound waves on the front of the radio.

New clear sounds

Sound is provided courtesy of a Fosi Audio BT30D amp, along with two KICKER CS Series speakers and a Goldwood 12″ woofer. You can also connect to the Fosi amp via Bluetooth which makes this build extra spouse-approved — you can play anything you like if the hard-coded radio options aren’t hitting the right notes.