On Sun, 11 Mar 2012, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

coffelt2 wrote:
Yikes! That's why you could get quite a jolt just from the cabinet, and it
wasn't too cool
to use the S-38 right next to a grounded piece of gear. I think I remember
something in
QST "Hints and Kinks" about putting a light bulb (small wattage) between the
S-38's cabinet
and an adjacent, grounded piece of gear. If the lamp illuminated, reverse
the S-38's AC
wall plug.

Back in my mispent youth, I took an S-38B which I had been given, and stuffed
a small 120v output AC transformer in it to use as an isolation transformer.

I also added a little bit of 1960's technology to it, I put two silicon diodes
in as a noise limiter.

In a fit of cleaning out, having long since gotten digital showrtwave radios,
in the 1980's I gave the radio away.

There was a story in "73" in the mid-sixties about someone trading in his
S38 for a better receiver (and obviously cash needed too). So the story
is basically about all the modifications he had to undo to put it back to
"normal". And right when he's at the store, he realizes he's forgotten
one mod, so he takes that out in the parking lot, I seem to recall having
to do some makeshift arrangement to cover the extra hole from that mod.

The isolation transformer wouldn't improve the receiver's ability to
receive one bit, but it sure made it a lot safer to use.

Michael