new find.. maybe..

[phil]

we are supposed to be picking up this cabinet this evening. Hopefully it's not a goose chase. My girlfriend emailed about it. at first I thought I would be nice by the front door I had a wardrobe I was going to put there but it was a bit too big. this one is pretty small but it looks nice. I have some old radios with similar feet from around 1932 or so so I'm guessing that's the era of it.

[1918ColonialRevival]

Hope it works out!

You're right - it does resemble a highboy radio cabinet that's had its legs shortened a little. Right about 1930 would be my guess as well.

[Gothichome]

I would inclined to agree with Colonial Phill, the shape with the cabinet on stand look and the mix of mock Tudor turnings and Victorian scrolling, combined with the flat almost Art Deco looking cabinet. If it was an old radio cabinet, it would have put forth to the multitudes.
“Who knows what evil lurks in the Hart’s of men. The Shadow knows”

[phil]

It was definitely a radio. I think it's about 1929 to 1932 or so. I dont know the brand and the fretwork, speaker and radio chassis were removed.

I have only one other that has doors that close to hide the components. most of them didn't have doors, except the 60's ones that were like a big square box, I dont collect those. because it was suited to be a liqueur cabinet, or a place to hide modern stereo equipment, that was its demise. I hate when people do this but since it was probably headed for the landfill anyway I guess it can either become a cabinet for stuff or a hybrid. I have a big "magic brain" chassis and a speaker. I could recreate the front with fretwork for the speaker. I'll ponder over it a bit.

the wood was stripped a long time ago so it needs some cleaning and to strip the one door, then refinish. no it was not cut down its quite big actually. much larger than the average console. probably top of the line at the time. I'll find some more suitable knobs. not worth much but it ties in with all the 1930's radios I like to collect.

Phil

[phil]

here's a link to an RCA with a magic brain chassis. I have that radio too and a spare chassis. this would be a little later, around 1936. the curved front doesn't really go with the cabinet so Ill have another look at the one I have. The radio I have goes quite loud. Its high end but later than this cabinet is. you can see how the cabinet of this one trended into the waterfall era and I have seen some slight variations in that cabinet.

http://www.greenhillsgf.com/Project_RCA_816K.htm

with this model it has a bezel made of tennite. it looks like Bakelite but it always shrinks and warps. the one I have in my RCA radio is ok. lots of them cracked. Its got motorized tuning so you press a button and it whirs to the station and it has a circuit that turns the volume down so you dont hear it passing the other stations. the cardboard tubes were supposed to improve the sound. I dont have the remote control It's rare and probably an added option.

I think this cabinet actually housed a TRF radio though , prior to the superhetrodyne. I just happened to think of this chassis because I have one on the shelf and it is quite a neat chassis that needs a home. I have lots of old speakers that are at least era correct. I think the radio probably needs a flat front chassis to look right. its a bit of a challenge to ID the cabinet with no id marks but someone else into radios may recognize this cabinet. If I check with the museum and other collectors I might find a chassis that suits the cabinet better even if it isnt' exactly the same as original. the cabinet might at least allow some other giant old chassis a place to live.

[phil]

while on that I have another I had stowed away like this. Its deceptive because it is proportional but it was a big high end tombstone radio. I happened upon the cabinet in perfect shape but no chassis. i then bought a chassis from a console hoping to fit it in there. I found that the knob distances were right but the distance between the knobs and the bezel is different in the cabinet I have. I figure I can lift the tuning capacitor up higher to make it fit. the giant tombstone cabinet is more collectable than the console versions.

http://www.tuberadioland.com/philco37-670B_main.html

[phil]

by comparison to that philco , here is a zenith walton.. Ive seen some of these go really high in price, It is also a giant tombstone. The model is coined the walton because that's the one that was featured on the TV show. That din't exactly make sense because they were supposed to be a poor working family and the radio was high end so it didn't really fit. again this one is Giant sized so in pictures it looks neat but in person you realize its so big !
http://www.stansantiqueradios.com/shop/ ... 232-walton

[Manalto]

That Zenith is a pretty piece of electronics. What a thrill it must have been for a family to bring one into their house for the first time.

[phil]

I had a closer look at the RCA chassis I have. It is a pretty fancy one and the front and glass dial are flat so it could be fitted into this cabinet. the chassis had some mods, the transformer was changed so the changes could present issuesas it may stray from the schematic and that's where I get lost.
that chassis had an option of having a remote control which wasn't common then but that page showed plans to build one. im not sure if it was a wired remote, the remote may have just had a wire to the radio and not have been a ""wireless remote" like we think of today.
Im thinking Ill do some restoration with the cabinet and later can decide what it should be used for. my girlfrined wantee a bookshelf so it could be place to keep books with doors that close or a stand to hide modern sterio stuff. It needs some finish and I dont know if It should be lacquer or shellac. It seems a lot of the stuff older than this was shellac and the newer ones were all lacquer.

I might just keep it as shelving. my cat seems to like to hide in there now. I have a little orange cat, my girlfriend has a giant fluffy cat. they sometimes argue so I was thinking of making a space she can get into so she can chill without being pestered so much. the other cat can't jump much and its so fat lol.. I thought if I just slid it over a bit then my cat could squeeze through the staircase railing and find refuge in the cabinet. I dont know what happens when I'm not there but they seem to have it worked out Its mostly just a lot of antics and growling as the big kitty keeps wanting to get close to the little one and the little one wants nothing to do with the big fat cat.. when we are there they are ok 90 percent of the time and at certain times they get all stressed so we sequester the fat one for 20 mins until they forget what the excitement was about. They are both nice kitties and sometimes they have been sleeping pretty close to each other so its just a matter of policing them and reducing the stress level as much as we can.

I have another console with legs that has a very beautiful cabinet with doors that close in a similar way. That one has a beautiful and ornate repwood grill and grill cloth knobs etc inside the doors where it was protected. the sides are a bit whitish , it's from humidity. that one is shellac I think. not lacquer. the base has 6 legs and they are sort of similar. the stand was stripped of finish. the stand is a separate piece, same as this one. sometimes the stands were robbed and made into coffee tables and things. That one is a FADA made in '32 just before fada went into bankruptcy.. Its confusing because there were also a lot of FADA radios made , some in fancy catalin cabinets worth thousands but that's a different company. the company name was re-used. a lot of the companies about then saw bankruptcies as the stock market crashed in about 1929 so they were all struggling but the radios were selling like hotcakes. sometimes things are found like evidence they were using up parts and modifying the circuitry to use the parts they had. I found some parts that were basically tin cans stuffed with tar and components and I got them open during rebuilding to discover the tin was from soup cans and things that were recycled to save cost.

I found one and started restoring the cabinet. Its a table model. I noticed it seemed like a weird cabinet design. finally I realized someone had made the cabinet for the radio and did a pretty good job of it they even made the knobs. I thought maybe the chasssis was found by someone not working during the depression so they went ahead and constructed their own cabinet. I restored that one and kept it as it as I found it but replaced the parts it needed to function properly. even back then they found ways to amuse themselves and to be resourceful and recycle so I find it really interesting to see some of these home made pieces even though they usually have very little materialistic value. most radios that are worth money are reknown for some reason and not one-offs.

my fada has a "flashograph" tube. some of the terminology they invented was fun. Im always amused by names that end in O-matic for example , there were many examples. "push button technology"
It was an extremely rare tuning indicator that had a neon bulb that would grow in length as signal strength grew. i found a kit that would make a cascading light electronic display using LEDs so I glued 30 orange LED's together and put them in a test tube that I had sandblasted. made up my own little circuit board to run it. the effect was quite good then I could see the light grow in length and display similar to the original flashograph tube. later I found one that I believe to be original and correct on ebay and bought it but I have yet to try to reverse the mod to use the original tube. ill try to get a pic of that one to show the beautiful face. that one had an interesting chassis with sort of a combination of a superhetrodyne and a TRF. I guess a bit of a weird transitional design but I did get it restored and working. replaced all the capacitors and resistors it needed and aligned it. we think of the electronics then as being pretty basic but they wee actually very complicated the books sure go into a lot of math and calculations. Its interesting to see how the technology was evolving. the older battery powered sets were made obsolete very quickly much like what we saw with early computers in our lifetimes but digital technology was not invented, it was all analogue. basically the tubes are amplifiers mostly and can convert a very weak signal into a stronger one. they way they capture the stations changed from just being very selective to a way of introducing a frequency and capturing the resultant frequency of the combination. If you add one frequency to another you get some different combined frequencies and superhetrodynes basically use that principle to select stations. others could explain that in more detail and more accurately. Its a bit to wrap your head around.

philco used a different angle with something they called a shadow indicator , that one as a circuit that basically blocks light with a flag so as the station tunes in the dial light changes in intensity. it darkens as the signal strength increases. I have a '32 Westinghouse that has basically a piece of film on a drum with a light behind it so as you tune the image is shown on a little screen on the side. some of the gimmicks of the day are really interesting. later stuff was pretty well the same circut as they found many technological improvements through the war efforts. around 1932 it was like the wild west of circuitry and they all had different ideas, that makes the restoration more challenging and interesting.

almost all the other radios from about 33 on had the typical tuning indicator or eye tube that was green. there are a few different numbers like 6U5 6E 5 but they look pretty similar and those ones sport a green glow. the indicators work like a picture tube and the phosphorous coating gets faded by sunlight eventually so often they need a new one. many of the 1930's radios had tuning indicators and that was part of their charm.

the radio that came in this cabinet was probably quite extravagant and heavy. I think it probably had a different chassis for the power supply and amplifier, some had more than one chassis. the bigger ones were usually the fancier more expensive models. in that age they were all in such competition and offered different features and electronic advancements. some were sort of half baked ideas. some was to avoid patents. sometimes they would look for reasons to use more tubes as they often advertised the number of tubes so they could use 4 for the amplifier tubes or sometimes even the rectifier was a couple of half wave rectifiers even though full wave rectifiers could do the same and were already available. then they could sell them as a 12 tube set or a 14 tube set as if the number of tubes was a measure of their worth. what some do is count the number of knobs the ones with more knobs are generally more complex so its a quick way of assessing them.

I was working on a rogers set that had a copper cup attached to the knob. Inside it simply covered or uncovered a coil that affected reception and worked as a sensitivity control. I found it weird to find the knob just attached to this copper cup thing. they all seemed to make them out of such heavy iron. this one probably weighed in at about 200 lbs or so and maybe the mass was part of the sales scheme too. there never was need for the chassis to be so heavy and nothing was made flimsy to save metal. I think people expected things to be heavy if they paid a lot for them.

[phil]

I got help identifying the radio cabinet. Here is an original ad. $475 was probably more than a model T back then, so it definitely was a high end model and a considerable investment in the latest technology.
the face could be recreated and maybe I will find a suitable Federal Chassis. if not its nice to know what it is. There was another picture of it with brass castors, so maybe that was original Ill check for holes in the feet. the glass knobs are not original so Ill take a guess on the style and at least find some that are closer to what I think they should have looked like.