Quote:
Originally Posted by Josef
Hello!
O.k. it seems there is some confusion about european sets with live chassis. The reason for european set with live chassis is easy:
Here in Vienna for example some districts had DC mains voltages others had AC back in these days. In Germany the situation was not much different. BTW: Max Grundig started rewinding burnt out power transformers which were connected to DC after the owner moved from a city with AC mains to another city with DC.
I own 2 sets from 1936 which are both universal sets with live chassis. On the photos of the backpanel of one set you can see how many line voltages can be selected to solve this chaos. In this case the universal set was more expensive than the transformer set with parallel heaters. Otherwise collectors usually prefer pure AC sets without live chassis. This causes that sets with live chassis were parted out to save and repair the AC sets. I guess a set with a live chassis is now much rarer because of this fact.
To make confusion perfect: I own a Radio from 1954 that has E tubes and a power transformer only for the heaters but a live chassis.
Greetings Josef
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Yes, but having a switched power supply has nothing to do with being able to run a radio off of DC Current vs AC Current, A Radio with a power supply that switches voltages from 110v-240v is an AC ONLY set, DC Powered radios weren't switched and usually only ran off of either 6v, 12, or 32v DC, or were battery operated up to 64v DC, anyways if you were to try and power a DC Powered Radio off of AC you'd fry the electronics or transformer, or if you tried to power an AC Radio off of DC you could also fry the electronics and transformer. Most of the time if a radio has voltage switching when I've seen it in foreign made radios (like the Japanese and German imported radios that were made for the North American Market) they usually had a fuse that you had to change out to a different amphere rating depending on which line volatge you were using, and usually had a power transformer in them which was a safety feature to make sure that the unit didn't blow up in your face if you accidentally tried running it off the wrong voltage when you got it and plugged it in, whereas if you had voltage selection on a hot chassis design with no fuses at all you could easily start a fire or blow up the radio by accidentally plugging it in and attempting to run it off of the wrong voltage, which is more than likely the reason why if there was a hot chassis design in European radios it didn't last very long (not nearly as long as in the American market which at that time we were making our radios for domestic consumption only so we didn't have to wory about having voltage switching power supplies, like the European radios did).