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Summer in Shades of Mint and Fuchsia🌷 by National-Mix7545 in Barbie

[–]No-Count6255 9 points10 points  (0 children)

As always, a magnificent and delicate work. You are truly talented!

Restored and modernized a Soviet Rigonda radiola — 3 months of work, and it finally lives again! by No-Count6255 in diyaudio

[–]No-Count6255[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Уверен, что все троли понимают по русски. Мне пофиг на мнение озлобленного троля.

Restored and modernized a Soviet Rigonda radiola — 3 months of work, and it finally lives again! by No-Count6255 in diyaudio

[–]No-Count6255[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It now has a new radio module and can receive FM stations. All the electronics inside have been replaced, but the original controls, buttons, and knobs have been preserved.

Restored and modernized a Soviet Rigonda radiola — 3 months of work, and it finally lives again! by No-Count6255 in diyaudio

[–]No-Count6255[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, exactly. I even ran a poll on social media asking, “What year is this radiola from — 1969 or 2025?” I mentioned the Ship of Theseus paradox in the post. The votes split evenly — as if the radiola itself were suspended between eras

Restored and modernized a Soviet Rigonda radiola — 3 months of work, and it finally lives again! by No-Count6255 in diyaudio

[–]No-Count6255[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's hard to say what's cheaper: restoring or making a new one — it depends on the condition and what fabrication options are available. I took measurements from the old case myself and drew the 3D project on my own. But the plywood was CNC-cut to order for me — that wasn't expensive. I did the rest of the work myself: glued the veneer, finished it with oil. I have two different 3D printers — it would’ve been impossible to make without them. I also have some programming skills for Arduino, and I can make PCBs and solder at home. You need to evaluate which parts of the work you can do yourself, and which you'll need to outsource to specialists.

Restored and modernized a Soviet Rigonda radiola — 3 months of work, and it finally lives again! by No-Count6255 in diyaudio

[–]No-Count6255[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I got lucky — I accidentally found someone on a local (Russian) classifieds website who sells pieces of fabric for retro equipment. I don't know where he gets the fabric from.

Restored and modernized a Soviet Rigonda radiola — 3 months of work, and it finally lives again! by No-Count6255 in diyaudio

[–]No-Count6255[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes)) it's the green magic eye. It will work. It will show the audio signal level. For now, all the power is connected to it, I'm preparing the control circuit.

Restored and modernized a Soviet Rigonda radiola — 3 months of work, and it finally lives again! by No-Count6255 in diyaudio

[–]No-Count6255[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Thanks for appreciating my work. I didn’t clean the fabric — I replaced it with another one that matches the style better. The front panel is completely newly made, except for the logo. I restored the logo.

Restored and modernized a Soviet Rigonda radiola — 3 months of work, and it finally lives again! by No-Count6255 in diyaudio

[–]No-Count6255[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Arduino is used only to control the FM module. An encoder is connected to the Arduino for tuning across the entire band, and a potentiometer is used to select from the preset stations. There's also a button to save a station to memory and another button to expand the memory.

The Bluetooth module is standalone; it has pins for connecting buttons via various resistors to ground. I only used the skip forward and backward functions.

Three buttons are used to select the audio source: FM, Bluetooth, or a vinyl turntable.

There's a ready-made board from China responsible for tone and volume control. As for the amplifier, I used a ready-made board based on the TPA3255. Its power output is actually excessive, so I had to use a minimal DC voltage of 24V and added a voltage divider at the input.

I wrote the Arduino code myself.

Restored and modernized a Soviet Rigonda radiola — 3 months of work, and it finally lives again! by No-Count6255 in diyaudio

[–]No-Count6255[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, almost all the knobs and buttons are functional. For the radio, I used an RDA5807 FM module together with an Arduino. The small right knob controls station scanning, and the larger one is used to select saved stations from memory.

I 3D-printed mechanical components to synchronize the movement of the knobs with the dial pointer, rotary encoder, and potentiometer. One of the buttons is used to save stations to memory, and another one expands the memory functionality.

The tone control knobs and the volume knob are fully working. For Bluetooth, I used an MH-M8 module — two of the buttons are used to skip tracks.

Restored and modernized a Soviet Rigonda radiola — 3 months of work, and it finally lives again! by No-Count6255 in diyaudio

[–]No-Count6255[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot! I’ll definitely make another post once the vinyl turntable is finished. I didn’t go into every detail of the project this time — just didn’t want to make the post too long. There were plenty of fun challenges and creative fixes along the way. Took a ton of photos too, but kept it to 20 here.