British made Philco and GEC radios - with nudes!
 

I'm just in the process of unpacking some stuff I shipped over from my old family home in England. While I was there, my dad and I cleared out the attic (loft). We found a couple of old tube radios which I bought over with me, and have just taken pictures of for your delight.

The Philco is a model A3704, and works fine. I put a plug on it while I was over there, and listened to it for several hours. The smell of burning dust on the hot tubes brought back memories, for this was the radio I used to have in my room. Those white knobs in the centre of each control aren't original, those crumbled and fell apart years ago. I can tell you exactly where these replacement knobs came from, they were from my old etch-a-sketch.

You'll notice from the nude pictures that this radio doesn't have a power transformer. There is a big wire-wound resistor that you can change to different voltages (although nothing below 200v). It will also run on DC as well as AC. I'm sure it would come back to life over here in the US if I got a powerful enough step up transformer.

I took the tubes out so you could see the all-original Mullards.

http://home.comcast.net/~leesonic/philco-a3704-1.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~leesonic/philco-a3704-2.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~leesonic/philco-a3704-3.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~leesonic/philco-a3704-4.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~leesonic/philco-a3704-5.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~leesonic/philco-a3704-6.jpg

The GEC is a model 5243 (I think), and currently is missing a tube (a U50 whatever that is) and the speaker. From the nudie pictures, it looks to have a power transformer, but sadly like the Philco nothing below 190v AC. Again, I took the tubes out so you could see the original Osrams.

http://home.comcast.net/~leesonic/gec-5243-1.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~leesonic/gec-5243-2.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~leesonic/gec-5243-3.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~leesonic/gec-5243-4.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~leesonic/gec-5243-5.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~leesonic/gec-5243-6.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~leesonic/gec-5243-7.jpg

Hope you enjoy looking at these pics.

Interesting sets. I think what I would do is look up the heater voltage of each tube and add them up, assuming the tube heaters are in series. Do they add up to something close to 120 volts? If not, and lower, some resistance would be needed, to figure later. You'd need the schematic, too, or do some circuit tracing. Then I'd bypass the power resistor completely and put a voltmeter across the heater terminals of one of the tubes, and plug the set into a variac. Slowly increase voltage until the voltage on the heater is up to spec. Check other voltages such as B+. Radio should play at that point and if you're lucky, the mains voltage going into the radio from the variac would be 120 or something close. If the variac voltage turned out to be less than 120 volts, then you could figure on a new dropping resistor for the set.

If you don't have a variac, you could use a light bulb in series with the AC line to the set. Start with a 40 watt bulb, check your heater voltage, and then try larger and larger bulbs, always checking heater voltage. Good luck! And wear rubber shoes and keep one hand in your back pocket working around live AC/DC sets.

Reece

No need to do this for the Philco. When I was back in England over the Christmas period, I put a plug on it, and it powered right up. Really nice bassy sound.

If I can find a U50 tube, I can power up the GEC radio as well. The (evil) thought did cross my mind of gutting this one and turning into an iPod player or something. But I'll see if I can get it working first.

Lee.

The lowest line voltage the Philco can operate at, if I understand your post, and from the notice on the back cover of the set, is 200 volts. Going through the procedure that I described would allow you to run the radio directly on 120 volts here, without using a transformer. It would be a no cost or very cheap and easy modification.

Reece

Oh, I see where you were going with that now. Would running on 120v directly give a high enough high tension? I thought it was normally around 200-300 volts?

I believe the heaters are in series, and as in series with the backlight for the scale. When you turn it on, this lights up really bright, and then dims down as the tubes warm up.

As soon as I get a variac or a step-up transformer, I'll have to try your suggestion.

A simple 1:2 step-up transformer will change 120 to 240.