[Arran]

I have two versions of the S-38, an S-38, and an S-38B, the latter only has five tubes, and does not have a pitch control for the BFO, called "C.W Pitch" on the S-38. I fixed up the latter, but never did anything with the S-38, they both had the same problem, missing knobs, and missing control shafts for the main tuning, and the bandspread, the latter had both missing.
As for house wiring it seems like it was all over the place as far as standards go, in Canada we had a national electrical code pretty early on, but there was still a lot of regional variants. Like where I am they were already using circuit breaker panels by the late 1930s, but in Ontario they were still using fuse boxes in the late 60s or early 70s. Older houses used to use the water pipes for a ground, which would be fine until someone did some plumbing and broke the circuit. Neutral should not be confused with earth ground, it's the center tap of the secondary at the power pole, so it's ZERO volts with reference to each leg, which is nominally 120 volts each, but may be well above earth ground.
Regards
Arran