What is this/what's it worth?

[Reece]

Ah, so you couldn't just make a big 6 volt power supply?

Yes, you could, but as the set is now, the high voltage is obtained from 6v through a vibrator-type step-up circuit, like those used in cars up through the late '50's. These are noisy and temperamental. You'd be going from 120VAC to a hefty 6VDC, hefty enough to supply the heaters, and then in the B+ section of the set from 6VDC to pulsating DC then rectified back up to 100 volts or more DC. Lots of voltage ups and downs that could be avoided. Simpler to do the following: if the set has 6 volt heaters throughout, that's easily taken care of by a filament transformer. Then a small 1/1 isolation transformer with silicon diode and a resistor and a couple of electrolytics can supply the high voltage. If you have 1 volt filaments, a simple DC supply has to be cooked up for that.

For history's sake, the vibrator supply can be left on the chassis and the new supply outboarded inside the cabinet. A page detailing the changes made and how to change back to the original if wanted can be left inside the cabinet. Unless you're restoring a set for a museum, or per your personal philosophy, I think it makes sense to make the set work as trouble-free as possible for use today, while preserving the original radio circuits, just my dos centavos.