"Mark Keith" wrote in message
om...


Yea, I wouldn't be surprised if it worked. Maybe with a little hummmm
though...
But I never had much use for it, so never have bothered with it. I
sometimes wonder how the MW might be on it, but when you have usual
newer radios, and also a 58 TO, and a big 48 RCA console, it starts to
look a bit lackluster..I notice the chassis will be hot with line
voltage on that old thing...Probably a good subject for a isolation
tranny to make it safe. MK


There's an alternative to an isolation tranformer, if you want to save a
little money and space. If the chassis is truely hot, that is with one
conductor of the power cord connected to the chassis and the steel cabinet
isolated on grommets, you can rewire it for a 3 wire cord. Connect the
cord's ground wire to the cabinet, the neutral wire to the chassis and the
hot wire to the switch. A bit of rewiring may be necessary, because these
radios typically connected the hot wire to the B+ rectifier and heater
string and switched the neutral to reduce hum pickup on from the power
switch on the back of the volume control. In practice, it doesn't usually
make much difference in hum if the wires at the switch are hot or neutral.
It's easy to rewire for the three wire cord, and it's almost impossible to
accidently touch anything that's electrically hot. I rewired my S-38 that
way, and it works fine.

Most AC/DC radios from about 1950 or so used a floating ground bus. There
was no direct connection from the power cord to the chassis. This is a
safer design than the true hot chassis, but it can also similarly be rewired
for a theee wire cord, or a polarized two wire cord. Either works, and is a
further safety improvement.

I always like to add a terminal strip and a1/2A pigtail fuse in these
radios, too. The fuse is redundant because there's a pinched down area in
one of the wires inside the rectifier, which serves as the radios fuse.
However, these tubes are getting a little expensive, and I'm convinced the
fuses I've added once saved me a rectifier tube.

I won't recommend this if you don't enjoy doing this kind of work, though.
These kind of radios are decent SWL radios, but nothing special. They do
have decent non-fatigueing audio, and you can listen for hours and only get
annoyed with the programming. Good for a shop radio.

Frank Dresser