1939 Silvertone FARM RADIO! AHHH!!

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Tubejunke

After over 30 years of messing with old radios and avoiding farm radios, one finally landed in my living room via the girlfriend's latest thrift store raid. It's a 1939 Silvertone clearly marked model 6050 6051 which if you use to look up info. or pictures on the WWW will show you data on a 1946 model that is much better looking and plugs into the wall. Silvertone had a really crazy way of cataloging their models. For instance, this is really a Silvertone Order= 57K 6050 Ch= 101.503-1. Go figure!

So, I now have a girlfriend gift that requires separate 4.5 and 67.5 VDC power to operate. Now if someone were really into playing with what amounts to a number of ways of approaching designing the circuits to provide this power, this would be an excellent project. And frankly I'm hoping that person is here reading this as I would like to see it find a BETTER home! LOL!

If it were more of an eye catcher, I may take the leap into these old things, but if you can see much in the little picture I attached you may agree that it is sort of a misshapen design. It is in really nice shape; I must give it that much credit. The dial has a pretty badly worn spot on one side where I guess all of the local stations of the time in whatever area were at.

Of all the ideas for powering these things I have seen, the best seems to be making an AC based permanent supply as opposed to bundling store bought batteries to achieve the voltages needed. Again, it needs a BETTER home owned by someone who enjoys these things and has a battery eliminator. For me none of the options are really cost effective to power an AM radio.

Does anyone here collect farm radios? I guess it fits in with the old breadboard crowd, but the old 20s stuff at least bears the uniqueness of obvious antiquity. Any thoughts?

I looked the schematic in N/A. It shows seven pages, but only one pertains to the set in question. Sears was great for using the same model numbers.
Your set is a Colonial built model. It uses the odd-ball two volt octal tubes, in a series-parallel filament arrangement from 4.5 volt battery. The B+ supply is only 67.5 volts, so the output stage is rather weak.
The cabinets were rather large to house the radio chassis and the batteries.

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

Your set is a Colonial built model. It uses the odd-ball two volt octal tubes

I don't believe that I have ever encountered 2 volt octals... could you list some numbers?

jr

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by jr_tech

I don't believe that I have ever encountered 2 volt octals... could you list some numbers?

jr

Here goes, from the schematic.
1C7G, osc mixer, 1D5GP, IF amp, 1F7G or 1F7GH or 1F7GV, det, 1st AF, 1G5G, audio output. There's other tubes, of this series. Seems like Zenith and Philco used them as well. Sylvania sourced.
IIRC, in my odd tube collection, I have some of this type, Philco branded.
BTW, the new tube source, I normally buy from, has these tubes, priced rather reasonably, like $3.00 or $4.00 each, because of limited demand.