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Philco Console

Stromberg48

"Classic Chinese audio"
Not sure you Stereo guys will care, but I saw an interesting Philco mono hifi on epay. the 690xx. Is there any Phil experts here that know more about this model, I hear it's the best Philco ever built. Is this how they did single ended back in the day?

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yes, 4 passive radiators, two mid/tweets, one woofer, separate power amp with tubes sticking right out the trans...a 1938 20 tubed beast of radio's golden age.
 
38-690 I believe that is. Yes, its the king of the Philco line from 1938 and possibly the best set they ever made. They're kind of rare. Thats actually not single ended either, it should be push-pull 6L6G tubes. Note the classic Philco method of putting the rectifier tube on top of the transformer with a funky end-bell cap.
 
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wow, that thing looks awesome!
ive never seen passive radiators that old before either...
I dont think ive seen anything that old before, lol

I love me some coke bottle tubes though
mmmmhmmm
 
38-690 I believe that is. Yes, its the king of the Philco line from 1938 and possibly the best set they ever made. They're kind of rare. Thats actually not single ended either, it should be push-pull 6L6G tubes. Note the classic Philco method of putting the rectifier tube on top of the transformer with a funky end-bell cap.

not sure about the 6L6, and it probably is PP I was just wondering about the two trans, and two (what look like) separate outputs (one for the top and one for the woofer?)
 
They were not passive radiators as we think of them today, they were called
acoustic clarifiers, they smoothed out resonances.
 
not sure about the 6L6, and it probably is PP I was just wondering about the two trans, and two (what look like) separate outputs (one for the top and one for the woofer?)

its got two power transformers and HV supplies, one for the audio amp, one for the reciever. Those are the ones with the rectifier plugged into the top. The audio output does appear to be bi-amped. The schematic shows a 6F6 driver with an odd interstage transformer coupling it to the p-p 6L6G output stage. The reason I say its odd is because it looks like it has two secondaries, one is the grid drive for the 6L6 tubes, the other looks for all the world to be output to two speakers wired in series.

http://www.nostalgiaair.org/PagesByModel/255/M0013255.pdf

print isn't very clear but the audio amp section is down in the lower right hand corner. As you can see, this is quite a complex set. The tube count is kind of padded though. If you look at it, its got one tube for an oscillator and one for a mixer. Most things combine this into one tube. It also has a seperate AVC and detector tube, where a lot of things combine this function. One thing of interest is the "magnetic tuning", which is actually AFC. That was quite uncommon for AM sets, and particularly for this time period. This thing also has variable IF bandwidth via some sort of mechanical adjustment of the IF transformers.
 
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its got two power transformers and HV supplies, one for the audio amp, one for the reciever. Those are the ones with the rectifier plugged into the top. The audio output does appear to be bi-amped. The schematic shows a 6F6 driver with an odd interstage transformer coupling it to the p-p 6L6G output stage. The reason I say its odd is because it looks like it has two secondaries, one is the grid drive for the 6L6 tubes, the other looks for all the world to be output to two speakers wired in series.

http://www.nostalgiaair.org/PagesByModel/255/M0013255.pdf

print isn't very clear but the audio amp section is down in the lower right hand corner. As you can see, this is quite a complex set. The tube count is kind of padded though. If you look at it, its got one tube for an oscillator and one for a mixer. Most things combine this into one tube. It also has a seperate AVC and detector tube, where a lot of things combine this function. One thing of interest is the "magnetic tuning", which is actually AFC. That was quite uncommon for AM sets, and particularly for this time period. This thing also has variable IF bandwidth via some sort of mechanical adjustment of the IF transformers.

bigphil.jpg
:thmbsp:
 
Great set and a monster in size and weight. I'm restoring one I recently found.
 
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I recently picked up the 37-690 and a 38-690.
I am finishing up both Power Supply/ amp chassis.
A labor of love.
I will post pics of the 37-690 unit in am.
Used 6B4G triode tubes instead of 6L6G's in 38-690.

camman
 

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I recently picked up the 37-690 and a 38-690.
I am finishing up both Power Supply/ amp chassis.
A labor of love.
I will post pics of the 37-690 unit in am.
Used 6B4G triode tubes instead of 6L6G's in 38-690.

camman

You don't see the 37-690's very often. Very nice find!
 
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