[Fred R]

I happen to like the 37,38 sub-chassis models. I have a soft spot for the 37-650. I was 10 years old in 1963 and was going to a summer camp northwest of Philadelphia. The camp was originally a farm and the owner converted it to the camp. The barn was the lunchroom and library and for used for other uses too. In one of the rooms were some chairs and tables and a 37-650 that belonged to the owner of the camp. One day it stopped playing. I was learning about radio and had a 1950 RCA tube manual my uncle had given to me. I learned as much as I could about tubes. It turned out someone had swiped the 5Y4G from atop the power transformer. I still remember the camp owner giving money so I could go to a little Hifi shop near my house that sold me a new Raytheon 5Y4GT to get the set going again.
Another time, I didn't want to play baseball. I asked the owner if he had any other old radios and he came down from his attic with a Philco 80. He handed me a bag of tubes which were the ones for the model 80. Fortunately, there were only three different types and you couldn't put them in the wrong sockets. These were my first exposure to Philco.
Getting back to the sub chassis', the only one that gave me trouble was a 6 volt DC 37-624 which had intermittent double .05 caps in the RF stage. If you pushed on the cap physically, the set played fine. Otherwise the RF stage was almost dead. I like the 37 and 38 model year battery models.