Majestic chairside

[Sam Cogley]

Found a "Majestic" brand AM/FM chairside (or, more accurately, the remains thereof) at a recent yard sale for $5. Due to rain exposure and previous poor storage, most of the wood is in very poor condition, though almost all of the decorative parts survived or are good enough to copy, and the metal bezels around the radio face and speaker are in nice condition, as are the dial and plastic knobs. Current plan is to salvage the decorative wood, measure the rest, and tuck the radio and metal bits in a box for later restoration. Anyone familiar with this brand? It has the postwar FM band only, and apparently had a 4x6 field coil or onboard-transformer alnico speaker in it's original configuration. Somewhere along the way a separate output transformer was installed. The radio chassis seems to be very well-built, my guess is that it was a fairly high-end model, but I haven't found any chassis or model numbers yet.

[Sam Cogley]

As promised, pictures. Anyone recognize it? Judging by the trim pieces and cabinetry quality, I think it must have been a fairly expensive unit. Unfortunately, the tuning needle is gone, I'll have to figure out some way around that. Right now I'm headed out to drop the chassis from the remains of the cabinet, I'll get some pics when it's out.

Anyone have a clue what the "200-300" numbers on the FM dial mean? It has only two band selection positions.

[Sam Cogley]

Further observations and more pictures.

1) the tuner sub-chassis is copper-plated, while the main chassis is bare steel (and rather heavily rusted on the side facing up).
2) there are more controls than appeared at first. The left and right knob trims are knobs in their own right - including the actual tuning control. There are now enough switches to account for three bands.
3) the back has a plethora of sockets, but I only know what one was used for. The others are a mystery. One has the plug wired down, and that plug has cut-off wires. Another has a socket on the end of some wires sticking through the chassis. Then there are two identical sockets, one of which had the output transformer plugged into it.
4) the serial number plate says "Majestic Radio, Made in USA, E 428369"
5) about half of the label/tube chart is intact inside the cabinet, though what's left isn't too legible.
6) the tuning needle is still there, it was just tucked back on the chassis, hanging on the broken tuning string.
7) the wood, minus the rotted remains of the decorative foot, the shattered bottom plate and the top is in decent shape. It may be salvageable with a re-veneer and re-glue of the various bits. There was apparently a divider under the radio chassis compartment at one point. I'm not sure why, as there is no obvious ingress to the lower chamber. The plate inside the "arch" doesn't seem too original to the rest of the cabinet, but I don't know why it would have been replaced. The speaker had to have been inside that oval bezel, unless it had two speakers.

[electroking]

I guess those numbers on the FM scale are for a proposed channel number plan.
With 5 channels per MHz and a 20 MHz range, you would effectively have 100
or 101 channels in the band. Channel 300 would be 107.9 MHz, 299 = 107.7,
298 = 107.5, etc.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by electroking

I guess those numbers on the FM scale are for a proposed channel number plan.
With 5 channels per MHz and a 20 MHz range, you would effectively have 100
or 101 channels in the band. Channel 300 would be 107.9 MHz, 299 = 107.7,
298 = 107.5, etc.

You are correct. The FCC (U. S. Federal Communications Commission) at one time tried this scheme to identify FM frequencies to make them more compatible with TV channels (the agency was trying to get listeners accustomed to referring to FM frequencies by channel numbers rather than by the actual frequency), starting with channel 201 (88.1 MHz) to channel 300 (107.9 MHz). However, the scheme didn't work out nearly as well as the FCC had hoped, so the channel scale, as well as the entire plan to "channelize" the FM broadcast band, were dropped in the early '50s. Note, however, that some U.S. FM radio stations still announce their assigned FM channel as well as the actual frequency in MHz, usually around midnight or one a. m. if they do it at all. There was an FM station in Cleveland, Ohio that did this back in the mid-'60s: "WKYC-FM, Cleveland, 105.7 megahertz, channel 289."

[Sam Cogley]

The channel thing is quite interesting, I've never heard of it. Anyone have any info on this particular radio or brand?

[maxm]

It looks to me like a newer radio in an older cabinet? It seems the set originally would have had a dial and speaker in the arched side of the cabinet, where the flat panel is now.

[Sam Cogley]

Originally Posted by maxm

It looks to me like a newer radio in an older cabinet? It seems the set originally would have had a dial and speaker in the arched side of the cabinet, where the flat panel is now.

That's possible. The cutouts for the radio head in the top looked rather rough, but I've seen plenty of examples of professional cabinetry that wasn't too smooth where it was known that a bezel would be hiding the cuts. The hardware holding the radio's wooden baseplate into the cabinet seemed quite professional and like what would be used on a production line. However, a radio sitting on a wooden shelf in that opening would make sense, as there is a place where a shelf would have slid into the cabinet that doesn't make any sense in light of the chairside configuration.

I'll compare the tube list on the partial label to the actual chassis tonight.

[Reece]

I believe someone put this radio chassis into an older cabinet. The dial is off center in the cabinet top. There is (what appears to be?) a large speaker grille on one side and what looks like a dial bezel on the other which doesn't make any sense. If your bandswitch has three positions, one might be for a phonograph: trace the wiring and perhaps the plug hanging off the back is AC for the phono motor, and one of the jacks is for phono input. The radio has a loop antenna for AM, but for FM would probably, in that era, need an external antenna so there should be some terminals for that.

Reece

[Sam Cogley]

Originally Posted by Reece

I believe someone put this radio chassis into an older cabinet. The dial is off center in the cabinet top. There is (what appears to be?) a large speaker grille on one side and what looks like a dial bezel on the other which doesn't make any sense. If your bandswitch has three positions, one might be for a phonograph: trace the wiring and perhaps the plug hanging off the back is AC for the phono motor, and one of the jacks is for phono input. The radio has a loop antenna for AM, but for FM would probably, in that era, need an external antenna so there should be some terminals for that.

Reece

There are terminals for FM in the center of the AM loop, and there was a very professionally installed FM antenna along the inside of the cabinet. Whoever modified this thing did a clean job of it.

The speaker grille is on one side (where it would face outward into a room with the radio on the right-hand side of a chair), and the dial bezel is on top. There are no other holes in the cabinet.

I'm fairly certain now that the radio head came out of a Majestic radio/TV/possibly phono console. I haven't been able to find any pictures of that exact dial face and bezel, though.