Hi I have finally pulled her apart and repaired the valve cap as instructed on my last post {Seeking brand and year of manufacture) I have sent through some photo's of the chassis, inside and out. It is not completely transformerless as I first thought, there is a small transformer inside. After discovering 90 odd volts at the antenna, after receiving a tingle when connecting the aerial, I did some more checking to find the chassis indeed live at 240v ac, however not shocking to the touch, fortunately, I should be a bus driver, as I'm a lousy conductor... Well I corrected the polarity and the old girl works even better! I found with the chassis now neutral, the aerial now has 0v and inside there is 249v in various places as well as 435 and 25v after the barrater... Please if anybody can help me identify my o'l girl I will be very grateful. Cheers!

My last post.

You mean this post?

If so, I do not know what that radio is.

I did some more checking to find the chassis indeed live at 240v ac

That's why we use isolation transformers when working on such sets. As a schoolkid, I got a massive belt from one of those chassis that could have killed me.

I corrected the polarity and the old girl works even better!

Not unusual for such hot chassis sets.

there is a small transformer inside

Sounds like the output transformer. If so, then the speaker should be connected to that.

Seeking brand and year of manufacture

As for year, going by the style of dial it is most likely pre 1936.

As for brand, once again, please let us know the valve types in the set. It's the best clue we'll have in the attempt to identify the chassis.

Back in the day, the sellers of such console radios often outsourced the cabinet work to a cabinetmaker and purchased the chassis from a radio manufacturer. So, they were what we would now call 'integrators'.

Ok, sorry, photo's havn't come up yet, but the valves are from the rectifier valve , 257GT, on the RH front, anticlockwise, centre RH is a 38 surrounded by an octagonal border, the rearmost RH valve is a Philips 6D6, the center rear valve is a 77 within the same type of octagonal borderline as the 35, then on the LH Centre next to the variable capacitor is a 6A7. All have top caps, except the rectifier and all are Radiotron with the exception of the Philips. (+0+)

Thank you GTC, yes I can imagine, I used to have ice cream containers of valves as a kid I pulled from old TV's at the dump, and got many old radio's working with them back in the late 70's, I sure wish I had them now! I'm revisiting and re-discovering my old hobby now! I used to love old capacitors too, getting the biggest I could find and remember soldering wires to them and charging them direct from the power point, with an almighty whine, then zapping the bejeezus out of moths and blow flies around the window, more afraid of my mum or dad catching me than what I was doing, until getting thrown across the room by one! Been very careful how I handle things since then!
But hope those valve numbers mean something useful, it's all I could find written on them. The set is working beautifully, it has an intermittent half fadeout and back over a period of 5- 10 seconds for about half an hour and then stabilises and sounds great for hours, no crackle or hum, really good and clear, very happy with it actually. The photo's when they come up show the chassis and the Saxon stickers on the coin cans. Cheers.

"257GT" is likely to be a 25Z5 rectifier.

I can't find a line-up to exactly match what you have listed, but yours is not too far off a typical AC/DC chassis of the mid 1930s era from manufacturers such as Astor, Breville, Kriesler, Lekmek and Pinnacle (Radio Corp).

It could well be an Eclipse/Saxon chassis as mentioned in your earlier thread.

As Aussie power plugs can only be connected to the receptacle in one way, you should wire the radio such that the chassis of the "hot chassis" set and the B- supply is directly connected to the mains neutral (grounded conductor). And the hot is the wire that the power switch controls. This of course assumes that the power point is correctly wired to code.

I thought that power transformers were mandated in Aussie radios. Makes it easy for me to run my Aussie radios, as I do have 240VAC available, as a pair of 120VAC lines out of phase with each other. The transformers are perfectly happy on 60Hz. Here, a 240V hot chassis radio would always have a hot chassis at 120VAC above ground, no matter which way the plug is connected. But my transformer sets are "cold chassis" and don't care about the input power's relation to ground.

I'm not sure if it was "mandated" back in the 1930's. Certainly, 99% of locally-made radios follow that rule.

If you look at an Australian power point, (with the earth pin at the bottom), the left pin should be Active and the right pin Neutral (which is earthed in the switchbox). But a lot of old houses had them wired up at random and could easily be wrong. I remember my father had to change a ceiling light-bulb socket in our ancient house, he turned off the light-switch and still got zapped. Turned out the switch was in the Neutral line.

All newer houses should be wired up correctly unless some clueless home renovator has been at work.

a lot of old houses had them wired up at random and could easily be wrong

I bought a Federation house which had been in the one family since forever. The last of the clan died there in her sleep.

One of the first things I did after getting the keys was check the power. Probably half of the power points were wired backwards, and the single circuit power fuse had been replaced by a paper clip. (The porcelain fuse carrier was almost copper plated from blown fuses.) Top of the agenda was complete rewire.

There was also no convention as to whether the earth pin was at 12 o'clock or 6 o'clock. When I was a kid, some of the power points in our house were upside down (12 o'clock earth) while those in the skirting boards had the earth at 3 o'clock, like these:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~cool386/plug/orientation1.jpg

It also needs to be remembered that, in that era, houses with electricity usually had it for lighting only. As appliances became available and affordable, they were plugged into light sockets via bayonet plugs -- polarity random.

I thought that power transformers were mandated in Aussie radios.

Bear in mind that, like America, Australia once had DC and AC domestic mains supplies. In the 1930s there were many Aussie radio chassis that were AC/DC. I have mentioned some of the brands above.

If you ever drop by my place, you'll see a few of these
The current carrying slots (the slanted ones) are both hot with 120V, 180 degree phase shift between them to yield 240V. The ground (earth) pin is ground (earth).

Sydney's CBD still had operational DC mains into the 1980s. This was mainly for lifts and escalators, which were all either converted to run on AC mains or permanently removed from service prior to the shutdown.

There is also a rumour going around that there's one or two surviving substations which have 600VDC outputs for the old tram system that stopped running in 1961. Why they'd bother keeping that in service for so long when the government at the time did just about everything humanly possible to make sure the shutdown decision couldn't be reversed is interesting. Sydney's had trams back on the rails since 1997 and several new lines under construction though they are not compatible - the new trams run on 750VDC.

There's fewer losses in DC transmissions but AC is easier and much cheaper to switch and convert/invert.

"circuit power fuse had been replaced by a paper clip.

Good move that, they last a lot longer than a fuse. Would have been even stronger with a nail in there!!

Interesting, but wouldn't a DC mains need to be around the same voltage as AC, or wouldn't it fry the radio?

DC mains in Sydney was mostly 240 volts. Switches to control lights were a lot larger though as they had to be designed to quench sparks. This isn't a requirement for AC due to the voltage being at nought 100 times per second.