Did this person get hosed 60 years ago ?
 

Just found an old repair bill in one of the tube radios I recently got . In 1957 this person paid for all 4 tubes in the radio with the given reason "1 tube dead , other 3 tubes shorted" , which I gotta say I find highly unlikely that 3 battery type tubes would all turn up shorted all at once since the directly heated filament cathode is far less likely to short (classic heater to cathode short of the indirectly heated types) than the indirectly heated type would . In fact , what exactly COULD a directly heated tube's filament short out to while still being intact enough to function at all ? (and not be considered a "dead" tube rather than a "shorted" one)

$10.20 for parts ; 4 tubes , one .001mfd 600v cap , one two meg two watt resistor , & one dial pointer

$3.75 for labor

$13.95 which was no small chunk of change back in 1957 :eek:

PS , sorry for the sideways pic , my I phone wasn't playing nice today .....

$117.11 in today's dollars.

Good grief , that's even more than I'd have guessed !

PS , I do realize I messed up and put this in the for sale rather than the off topic chat area , and I've asked the Mods to move it there for me :)

I mean... I guess it's possible that resistor and/or cap could've fried and ruined all the tubes... but idk.

There's no model number but if it's the 8BX series RCA. the one with the aluminum case and bakelite sides, the radio was about $50.00 new, 10 years prior.
The tube compliment seems from the earliest model. The later ones used a 3V4 and a 1U5 instead of the 3Q4 and 1S5. I have both variations.
Many people would've spent $14.00 on a $50 dollar radio, where not so much on a $20 dollar radio.
I see there was no sales tax on the labor, just on the tubes and parts.

Tax on parts only is probably the norm. It was that way in Mass & they
would tax you for ANYTHING ! Thank God we dont have sales or income TX in N.H., just real estate, death & sin taxes. Oh & the first in US lottery too.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

Ever since the sales tax started in Wisconsin in 1962, labor, service calls and delivery charges were taxable, as well as the parts.

If somebody hosed up hooking up a battery, (B+ to the filament connections) it likely could take out all the tubes in a flash. 2M 2W resistor? Seems an odd value for that set.

I just looked the model # of the set, I remember! It's an RCA model 66BX.
The audio coupling capacitor is a .002 and not a .001 and I don't see a 2M 2W resistor used. It's only $0.60 worth of parts and if they weren't replaced, it's only petty larceny. The tubes are a different story and if the old ones were returned to the customer.
The long explanation of the service procedure stating realignment seems a little extreme.

I forgot to include that part. That radio used an A-B battery pack with a plug-in connection. Kind of hard to make a mistake in that regard!
Most radio owners wouldn't try to make a connection like that. :scratch2:

And it does not pass a sanity test... to dissipate 2W in a 2 meg resistor a voltage of 2000 Volts would be required.

jr

The schematic is in Riders 15. Didn't look over the schematic that carefully but I don't think there's a 2 meg resistor in it. :scratch2:
I was hanging out in a small TV repair shop in the summer of 1957 at the age of 12yo. I wanted a little exposure to the repair game. The guy that ran the place did the same thing, replacing tubes that didn't need replacing, etc.

I guess some things are timeless, just the objects change.

Exactly my thought when I saw that receipt . One bad tube and a missing dial pointer , sure . ALL the tubes in the set plus a couple other parts on top of that besides the dial pointer ? methinks the poor customer got , well , , Hosed .

The Plot Thickens !
 

So just for kicks I figured I'd inspect the radio the repair slip was found in . Come to find out , not only was the repair bill in there , so too were the tubes that had been replaced along with a capacitor that is presumably the one listed in the bill of repairs . The customer appears to have used masking tape to tape the old parts into the battery compartment . Problem is , there are NO "new" capacitors . I can find no evidence of soldering work on any of the capacitors that looks like it was done "after the fact" , ALL connections appear to be as built . I do see the 3Q4 appears gassy , but I intend to test the other three tubes paying special care to perform a through shorts test on all three .

PS , this customer hosing wasn't administered in Massachusetts , Massachusetts is just where the set ended up . The slip says "Danielson Conn." .....

That radio is rather hard to get apart. How the dial pointer got lost or broken is any ones guess. Whether the tubes were replaced is another issue and that model doesn't use a 1U4. It is a sub, but not the proper tube.

Diesel , are you looking at the Monitor radio model M-510 ? Because the rider's shows it using a 1U4 for an IF amp , and this radio does indeed use a 1U4 in that position . I see that a 2.2meg is used as control grid bias for the 3Q4 and see a 1/4 watt in that position , but I still am looking for a 2.2 meg 2 watt in the schematic (In the pictures I posted in my last post you can see the 2.2 meg 2 wat that they installed , but there is only one 2.2 meg 1/4 watt listed on the schematic and it is present between the 3Q4's control grid and ground)

I'm well aware that a 1U4 is used as an IF amplifier in many battery radios, but not this particular model. I failed to see a 2.2meg earlier, but naturally not a 2 watt resistor.
The radio I'm referring to is an RCA 66BX. It's kind of hard to read the writing on the invoice regarding the make.

:scratch2: There was nothing on the invoice referring to the model of the radio , so I'm curious as to where you got RCA 66BX as the model ? The radio in question is "Monitor radio model M-510" and I posted pictures of it back in post #15 . Anyway , I'm not having an easy time posting up the schematic for it , but it's on Nostalgia air if anyone wants to have a look .

I didn't see your entry about the Monitor. Then, I looked at the invoice and it does say Monitor.
Spending that kind of money on the el-cheapo make was insane. :thumbsdn:

The shop never filled in the make or model info , the "model no." line having been left blank . In the "complaint" line was written "monitor portable radio" so I can see where it would be easy to mistake actually which model radio was being serviced . And yes , that was a crazy amount to spend on such a cheaply made set .

Hopefully sometime today I'll get the time to test the tubes that were replaced and taped into the battery compartment to see just how may of them are "shorted" . I suspect that outside of the gassy 3Q4 they'll all test fine (The tubes the shop installed are all still working , the radio receives WBZ AM 1030 fine) .

battery tubes have fragile filaments, i could see them shorting if the set were dropped, for example

And the answer is , , , NO , the customer DIDN'T get hosed !
 

It takes an honest man to admit he was wrong , and being honest I'm gonna admit right here and now , my suspicion of the customer getting ripped off , based on how could all 4 tubes go bad all at once , was wrong .

Remember the Happy Days episode where Fonzie just couldn't admit he was wrong ? Mrs. Cunningham kept badgering him to fess up and admit he was wrong and he just couldn't do it , every time he tried to say the word "wrong" he'd stumble and mumble and do everything but say the word . Well not me , not here , my ego ain't so fragile as to admit my wrong notion about the tubes .

So , as you've likely already guessed , yes indeed I did test the tubes taped into the back of the radio and just as the receipt says , one is bad (the gassy 3Q4 that's visually obvious from the cracked glass and white dusty getter) and the other three show up shorted on my tester . In the exact same test , the working tubes in the radio test with no shorts , and the tubes that test shorted do not work in the radio . All three that lit the short light also show grid emission , and no normal cathode emission when tested for that .

So in the end the customer got exactly what they paid for , A properly repaired cheap radio that likely didn't cost all that much more than the repairs did when it was bought new .

PS Olorin67 may well have provided the answer , dropping the radio darned well could have damaged all the tubes at once .

I wonder if the gal asked for an estimate and then OKed the repair.
Monitor Equipment sold other household appliances. They sold a crazy apartment type small wash machine that had a hand crank wringer on it. I saw it years ago in a thrift shop.
There's a Monitor radio in Riders, that is a rebadged Crosley.
I could've been a product sold door-to-door. :scratch2:

I remember that washing machine , and yes your right I've seen other "Monitor" branded small appliances over the years as well . It's funny , trying to think of the reason someone would pay so much to fix such a cheap radio , did the radio have sentimental meaning to the customer or perhaps the customer had borrowed it from a friend , dropped it as Olorin67 wisely speculated , and was obligated to have it fixed so it could be given back to whomever it was borrowed from in working condition . So many possibilities .