[nuke]

Greetings -

Recently picked up a Philco 89 chassis installed in a Philco 35 cabinet. (The Philco 35 is a 32 volt set, right?) However, the label pasted inside the cabinet says Philco 89. There is also a date stamp of March 1934 in the cabinet. Is it possible that Philco installed the chassis at the factory from leftover 89 chassis? The chassis fits perfectly. Again, the thing that makes me wonder me is the 89 sticker in the cabinet. It looks like it is factory glued in.

[Ron Ramirez]

Hi

Model 35 is a battery-operated version of Model 70, identical to the 70 except for the exposed Model 20-style speaker screws and rosettes.

I think you are thinking of Model 32, which uses a chassis that is very similar to the 89 chassis save for the external 32 volt DC power supply that mounts on a shelf above the main chassis in the cathedral and tombstone models.

That is neat - first Steve Davis and his previously unknown 89H, then Todd and his Model 51 in a 470/490 cabinet, now this. Guess this is the year for unusual finds. Some folks have all the luck. Hmph. I can't complain, though; last year I brought home a Philco 52 grandfather clock cabinet - only the second Philco GFC I've ever seen made to use a 52 chassis.

Can you share some photos, please?

[nuke]

Ron - you're right. I meant the 32B. Here are a couple of quick photos. Note the label.

Note from site admin: Sorry, but the photo which was attached to this post is no longer available.

[nuke]

Here is the front. So either somebody went through alot of trouble to post an 89 label in there or this was done at the factory. That glue looks mighty original. The date stamp inside the cabinet is Mar23 4. (March 23 1934). Note the stamp was not under the cabinet but inside just above the 89 label. The chassis serial is H58826. I have another 89 with a serial H41375 in a normal sized cathedral cabinet.

Note from site admin: Sorry, but the photo which was attached to this post is no longer available.

[Ron Ramirez]

It probably is original. Might be a Monday or a Friday radio.

Translation:

A "Monday" radio would have mistakes because someone along the assembly line was still half asleep (or hung over) and did something wrong, like stick an 89 chassis and tube layout label in a 32B cabinet.

A "Friday" radio would have mistakes because someone, or several someones, along the assembly line was in a hurry to get off work and did something wrong, like stick an 89 chassis and tube layout label in a 32B cabinet.

Or Philco could have even had a run of 89 chassis and 32B cabinets, without 89B cabinets and 32 chassis, and just used up a production run by making a few Phranken-Philcos.

Notice your cabinet has the wood brackets for the 32 power supply.

At any rate, you have a very interesting, possibly unique, radio.

[Jayce]

My Philco 37-610 actually has a 37-620 label in the cabinet. I thought someone had stuck a 37-610 chassis into the console, but all looks original. Mine might be one of those monday or friday radios.

[Ron Ramirez]

The date stamp inside the cabinet is Mar23 4. (March 23 1934).

Another thought. By late March 1934, Philco would have been getting ready for production of the new 1935 model line, which were introduced to their dealers in May and to the public in June 1934. It could very well be that, since the 1935 Philco 89B and 32B would have new cabinets, that Philco put together (who knows how many, a few or a few hundred) Philco 89 chassis and 32B cabinets to get rid of excess stock, as has now been documented with sets such as a 52 grandfather clock, 89H, 51 in a 470/490 cabinet...and who knows how many other Phranken-Philcos may still be waiting out there for us to discover and scratch our heads about.

[nuke]

Well I checked and that day was a Friday. So the Friday theory could be correct. However, I also think that Philco could probably have been using up existing stock. If anybody has a chassis number greater than mine in a 89 cathedral, I'd like to hear what cabinet it is in. Another thing is it doesn't look like anything ever sat on those second level braces. No marks on the wood at all.

It would be interesting to see what an actual 32b label inside the cabinet looks like in terms of placement. I wonder if they put it in the same spot? Most of the date stamps I've seen were under the cabinet although I have seen a few inside, like the 84bs for example.

[Arran]

Why did the model 32B require a seperate power supply chassis? Did they use a vibrator, transformer, and rectifier for the high voltage? Most 32 volt sets that I have seen used 32 volts for the B supply but maybe they couldn't do that with 1934 era tubes?
I wonder about the left over cabinet idea, it's possible I suppose but an in house cabinet shop could more or less make the proper cabinets on demand when it comes to table sets. Why would they make a surplus of 32B cabinets, they probably would have sold 1/10 the number of 32Bs as opposed to model 89Bs?
You often see mixes and matches like this with some Canadian sets, Canadian Westinghouse for example. I have a Canadian Westinghouse mantle set that has three bands and five tubes, but they also made an seven tube battery set in the same cabinet. I ran into a Westinghouse console on CL, it looks quite impressive, but I asked for the model number and it's a 622, basically a five tuber with a magic eye, but if I were to look it up I would probably find that they used the same cabinet for an eight or nine tube chassis. In the case of Canadian Westinghouse they had their cabinets made by an outside cabinet supplier rather then in house so that may account for sharing cabinets between models.
Regards
Arran

[Ron Ramirez]

Yes, the model 32 uses a vibrator power supply to provide high voltage for the set. This was Philco's first 32 volt set. A later 32 volt set (model 642) did use 32 volts for the B+.

[nuke]

Don't forget this was in the depths of the Depression. Rather than take a loss, I'm sure that leftover chassis could be put in leftover cabinets at the end of production runs just to use them up. After all cabinets did get damaged so I'm sure there were mismatched stock.

[Arran]

Don't forget this was in the depths of the Depression. Rather than take a loss, I'm sure that leftover chassis could be put in leftover cabinets at the end of production runs just to use them up. After all cabinets did get damaged so I'm sure there were mismatched stock.

That's just it, why would they have leftover cabinets at all, when you have an inside cabinet shop you can pretty much make the cabinets to order as you need them, if you had 300 model 89Bs going down the line that day then they would have the cabinet plant supply 300 cabinets. If it was an outside cabinet supplier then it would have been more common for there to be surplus cabinets as they would have a longer lead time on ordering cabinets; they would guess how many they would need for a given week or month and if sales fell short they would end up with extras. In the case of the 32Bs it would never have been a high production set compared to the model 89 so it would be more likely for them to have leftover 89 cabinets since they were producing more to start with. Maybe they overestimated the popularity of the 32B and had to many cabinets built but I'm also thinking that this was a factory screw up, somebody grabbed a model 89 chassis and put it in a model 32 cabinet, since the model 32 used the same chassis minus the power transformer.
Regards
Arran

[Ron Ramirez]

Philco's top executives held a meeting every week to discuss the previous week's sales and used those figures to set production for the following week. Being human, they probably made mistakes and sometimes overproduced. The oddball "Phranken-Philcos" that seem to have been coming out of the woodwork during the past year or so are, most likely, the result of those mistakes.

We weren't there in 1934, nor would we have been allowed into that boardroom to witness the large old secondhand desk where James Skinner held court with his top executives every week. Written records have yet to be found, if they even still exist, so all we can do at this point is guess.