[Eric T]

I'd still suspect the band switch contacts are dirty. I've found that most spray cleaners won't touch 70 year old switch corrosion. Use some Deoxit or q-tips with cleaner on it. If the SW contacts aren't bright metal, they are still dirty. But this is just a guess. It's hard (or impossible) to troubleshoot the actual problem without test equipment to be sure what's wrong. You're just grasping around in the dark.

You might just be in an area with lousy SW reception. The 42-1008 I did wasn't exactly brimming with life on the SW band anyway. My 39-45 gets way better reception overall than the 42-1008. Maybe you can try to hook up a long wire antenna to the external antenna socket and see if reception is any better.