This tombstone
radio is the latest addition to my collection. I need HELP identifying
it!!!
This tombstone
radio is the latest addition to my collection. I need HELP identifying
it!!!
It is a rather large radio: 55 cm tall, about 40 wide and 28 deep! The
front seems to be mahogany. There are signs of a brand label in the form
of two tiny nail holes, but the label is gone. The speaker grille cloth
does not seem to be the original. It looks like an earlier "restorer" replaced
it by a panty hose!
This is the
strangest aspect of this radio: The dial is graduated from 0 to 100, rather
than any frequency indication! I had seen this only on very early
radios, dating to 1922 or so.
The knobs (of which one is missing) have a rather unusual shape, and
I will need to make a two-part mold for casting a replacement.
The speaker
is very small compared to the cabinet size. As in all radios of this vintage,
it has an electromagnet, and like most of them the output transformer is
mounted on the speaker.
The design is an early superhet, probably with 175kHz IF. The tube
lineup is this:
- 58 RF amp
- 2A7 converter
- 58 or 57 IF amp, the tube number cannot be read
- 55 detector and audio pre amp
- 59 power amp
- 80 rectifier
This would date the radio pretty much to 1933, or maybe 1932. All tubes
except one are RCA "Radiotrons", but this doesn't tell much about the radio's
brand since most radios then used RCA tubes. On the other hand, RCA was
the most commonly sold brand here in Chile in those years, so it is likely
that this is an RCA. Other radios I have seen with this tube lineup are
Majestic sets, and some Atwater Kent too use these tubes.
Fellow radio collector Renato Menare identified this radio as built by one of the many "radio assemblers" who were active in Argentina in those years! Renato even gave me an exact knob to replace the missing one. The radio is probably a few years younger than what the technology in it suggests. Inspection of the components indeed reveal a lot of parts made in Argentina, while other components come from all around the world.
If you have any more info, it's still welcome!