1946 Philco score.

[Pat Pixley]

Kind offer Pat.
Good thing is these don't weigh sh*t and if you turn it around won't have to look at the woodgrain :-)
Creighton

      Creighton  you make me laugh.

    Welll wood grain and all I will still pick it up for who ever . 

[BrianS]

Greg,

Can I borrow a bit of your radio expertise?  I have a 1940s Delco tabletop radio that belonged to my grandfather.  I have done some minimal research on it and it turns out its a "farm" radio.  For those who don't know what that is (that included me until I started looking into it) it does not have a power cord.  It was made to connect to a wind turbine for rural people who did not have electrical power at there homes back in the day.  I believe you could use a battery, but they were too expensive to continually buy and replace back then so the radio looks like it is dual voltage - battery power or turbine power.  The radio has a great art deco look so it looks nice just sitting there, but I would like to see if it actually works.  Unfortunately, I do not have a wind turbine lying around so I would like to figure out how to modify it to use standard power.  Any chance you have done this with some of your collection?

[BrianB]

Farm radios are really neat. You are absolutely correct on how they were powered. As far as the batteries go for these.....

Basically most older radios have three different batteries: A, B & C. Later on the "C" circuit was eliminated removing the need for the "C" battery. But you still need to provide juice for the A & B.

The "A" battery provides DC power to the filament which in turn heats it up, this is a relatively low voltage but the battery itself is bigegr than the "B".

The "B" battery provides DC voltage between around 22 volts on the low side and around 90 volts on the high side. This is what is called "Plate Voltage"

If you have some eletrical/electronics knowledge, you can build your own Battery Eliminator. If you don't there are a couple of places that sell them. Probably the best one on the market right now and definitely worth the money, the ARBE III. Here's the link to the website.

http://www.arbeiii.com/

[GreginNM]

Hey all, been busy here at school.  Thanks for the comments!  Yes, Brian, I've collected radios for about 25 years now (man, I'm getting old!).  I mainly collect 1920s radios, but I like the cathedrals and Philcos as well.  Great deal on that A-K 55, and that swap meet would be a blast!

Creighton, you don't need to switch to a 3 prong plug.  I usually restore with the reproduction cloth covered wire and a 2 prong plug.  If you wanted to ground it, you could just connect to the metal chasis somewhere.  Compressed air works fine.  I usually go through mine with a fine tooth comb and clean everything out using a damp rag and such, but that takes time.  I like them to look like new when I'm done working on them.  Most of the radios had their own antenna in them that worked fine, but you could just run a piece of wire up in the room where the radio is along the wall or something, and that would get you even better reception. 

Thanks, Brian, for getting the response on the battery/farm set!  The ARBEs are great, and will work on any battery radio.  Otherwise, building your own is the best option.  I don't usually power most of my battery sets.  Having one or two ARBEs around just to show off a couple radios as working is good enough for me.

Greg

[scalebowler]

For those battery powered radios could you just hook a bunch of standard batteries together untill you get the same voltage? It would not be the best way to do it because of the amount that you would need but could it work?

[Creighton]

Thanks Greg!
It will be going in the basement hence the antenna.
Hope school goes well.
Creighton