Collector of vintage radios knows how to make them sing again
By: Carolyn Kemmet
Photo by Jack Robert
Patrick Brabham is the hero of high fidelity. In finding and fixing vintage console radios, “I fight the scourge of soulless, modern plastic electronics,” he declares. “I’ll take a Motorola, Magnavox, or Zenith any day.”
This aficionado relishes the hunt. During his interview with Carolina Home + Garden, Brabham talks about picking up a highly desirable Zenith that very night. His collection ranges from standalone radios, which really counted as furniture back in the day, to combination radio-record players and radio-televisions, with the occasional “TV theater” thrown in (a radio/record player/television).
Photo by Jack Robert
But his collecting has been curtailed a bit since he got busier with repair work.
“I was a tinkerer as a kid,” says Brabham, “and went from fixing classmates’ ‘clicky pens’ to repairing lawn tools and small electronics, and graduating to go-cart repair as a teen. My grandfather was a TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority] welder, too, so perhaps there’s some family influence.”
Brabham relocated to Asheville a year ago and created a makeshift workspace in the living room of the home he shares with his significant other, though he hopes to expand soon to a larger work area. He’s brought out some of his favorite pieces for this story — “the cream of the crop.”
Brabham’s knowledge of each radio’s history and inner and outer workings is encyclopedic, never mind that he only picked up his first console, a German specimen, in 2017, at a soon-to-close Marion antique shop.
But he got hooked quick.
“At one point, I worked the night shift in corporate tech support for an Oak Ridge [Tennessee] company. … I kept picking up consoles and found myself working on them during the idle periods between phone calls.”
In fact, many of Brabham’s consoles are German — obscure models with fancy, piano-gloss-grade lacquered finishes. Over time, he determined where to find parts. “If you’re tuned in, you know,” he quips.
His collection spans the Art Deco period, the MCM atomic age (mid-1940s through 1960), and “the futuristic 1960s” space-age look, aka Retro Futurism.
No matter the era, though, when Brabham is refreshing an old radio, the most frequent troubleshoot is damage from the elements. Many pieces sit for years, if not decades, in moist basements or hot, unventilated attics. The once-vivid lacquers turn yellow when exposed to window light, and the fabric coverings on console boxes inevitably get moldy, “so I learned how to mitigate that,” he says.
Brabham has long haunted antique malls and the WNC Bridge Foundation’s estate sales to find the next stereophonic gem, and his passion turned into a full-blown restoration business. “I now do restocking work for the foundation on the Mondays following their sales,” he says, “which allows me to see when good contenders for restoration are donated. As I’d eyeball antique radios or consoles closely at the sales, people would comment, ‘If only folks still worked on these.’ Then I’d reply, ‘I do!’ This resulted in some great projects.”
Eventually, he got business cards printed up and started an Instagram page, which connected him to a pivotal like-minded client, Stephen Paulet, CEO of Madison, Wisconsin-based Groovy Wood Studios. “Stephen noticed how precisely I explained my projects,” Brabham says. “We connected, and now I work on amazing pieces for him, delivered by a dedicated runner who drives across the country picking up and delivering consoles.”
Radios of various vintages reside in Brabham’s Montford living room.
Photo by Jack Robert
His first project for the company involved restoring a piece made by Italian electronics company Brionvega. It was the futuristic Bowie model. “Let’s put it this way — it would be at home on the 2001: A Space Odyssey spaceship,” says Brabham. “Paul sent me its guts, and I had to do some serious FM radio work on it.”
Today, the radio is displayed in San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art. “Nobody sees my soldering ‘art,’ but they hear the sound quality, which is the real gift,” notes Brabham.
“My focus,” he continues, “is preservation, which is why I almost never gut everything in a piece.” Also, though, “I’m not against adding something modern to make [an old radio] usable,” he says. “The consoles’ sounds is so rich. Engineers knew what they were doing in the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s.
“Hopefully what I do makes people remember.”
Patrick Brabham, Asheville, on Instagram @vintage.fix.avl or call 865-287-5179.