What the heck is this part??

The multi colored square thing that's blue, gray, orange, white and red

First guess, an inductor, second guess, a capacitor. What would make the tie breaker is what is the tube, and what are the connections. That would help.

...that is a .068µF capacitor; not sure of voltage (perhaps 200V?). It's European; I'm not sure if they were made by Philips (NL) or Mullard (UK). (Philips used them extensively, but I've seen them recently identified as Mullard caps.) They are often called 'Tropical Fish' capacitors because of that coloration. Unlike the infamous 'Bumblebee' caps, these have Mylar or similar dielectric (they're not paper caps!) and they are of reasonably good quality and reliability.

Unfortunately it's going to have to be replaced - if you look closely on the right, the end has broken away and the lead is separated. I'm guessing it is not original anyway. There's another paper cap that does not quite match the others, even though it is a .01 uF/ 400 v. That one is a silver paper tube with a plastic sleeve. This may have also been a replacement. This is on a pre war Silvertone portable.

By the way, I found the following link that tells how to decode the colors. It's a 250 volt.


Tropical Fish color codes

I believe the capacitance is .0068uf (6800 pf), 200 volt.

tpaairman wrote:Unfortunately it's going to have to be replaced - if you look closely on the right, the end has broken away and the lead is separated. I'm guessing it is not original anyway. There's another paper cap that does not quite match the others, even though it is a .01 uF/ 400 v. That one is a silver paper tube with a plastic sleeve. This may have also been a replacement. This is on a pre war Silvertone portable.

By the way, I found the following link that tells how to decode the colors. It's a 250 volt.


Tropical Fish color codes

...ok...I stand corrected: .068µF (68 000pF)/10%/250V... ...and it's definitely not original; these were used from the 1960s into the 80s...they didn't even exist yet when your radio was built...

So I guess that capacitor reads:

Blue = 6
Gray = 8
Red = 2 (zeros added to the 68 in pF)?
White = 10%? (or is it silver?)
Red = 2 (200V)

If so, now it makes sense to me. I always have to look up capacitor colors. Resistors come natural. Why is that?

Don Cavey wrote:. I always have to look up capacitor colors. Resistors come natural. Why is that?

Dunno. They use the same colors. Just pretend its a resistor

Where I get confused is the way they use decimal points on capacitors and the conversion from µF to mmF to PF to nF. Since my post above, I went to Nick's site and downloaded the conversion from each to the other.

Still, resistors are a no brainer...

Just remember there's 6 decimal points from uf to pf. You'll know if you go in the wrong direction.

nf is in the middle, 3 points from either end.

Don Cavey wrote:So I guess that capacitor reads:

Blue = 6
Gray = 8
Red = 2 (zeros added to the 68 in pF)?
White = 10%? (or is it silver?)
Red = 2 (200V)

If so, now it makes sense to me. I always have to look up capacitor colors. Resistors come natural. Why is that?

...you've pretty much got it, except that third band is orange, not red. Thus three zeros, not two. Problem with capacitors is that, although they used the same basic color coding, the different capacitor manufacturers often threw their own wrinkles into it, primarily odd colors for tolerances, working voltages, temperature characteristics, mil-spec indicators, and even dielectric composition. End result was a whole slew of different color coding schemes for capacitors over the years, and the need for a whole slew of color code tables for sorting them all out. According to the above link, the 'Tropical Fish' caps read like resistors (but in pF instead of ohms) with the top three bands, and used the following colors for tolerance and working voltage: fourth band either white for 10% or black for 20% tolerance; fifth band red for 250 volts (also brown for 100 volts, yellow for 400 volts, and blue for 630 volts)...

The third band looks red to me, but if it is orange, then the value would be .068uf.