I noticed that the buttons available at Radio Daze for the early 40s models like 40-150, 41-250, and 41-280 are available in two colors, brown and wine. The buttons on my 41-250 and 41-280 look brown, but the man at Radio Daze said they often look brown when they are old, and they could have been wine originally.
Does anyone know which models used the wine buttons? Could the same models have been built with either color? Is it pretty obvious whether they are brown or wine, or could a beat-up wine button look brown?
I like the way the wine ones look, but if brown is the original color, then that's what I want to replace the beat-up ones with.
Hi John,
Have you pulled any of the pushbuttons? I thought they were brown on my 40-155, but when I removed them, I could tell they were wine where they had no been exposed.
The buttons on my 41-250 are definitely brown. They were good enough to be repaired by dipping in epoxy. They look like new.
Carl,
After I got home last night I checked the buttons from my 41-250. They are definitely brown clear through, so I'll buy the brown replacements.
I've never seen a 40-150 in person, but I just bought one (still in shipment!) that clearly has wine buttons from the pictures. All the pictures I have seen of 40-150 and 40-155 seem to have wine buttons, but sometimes you have to look hard to be sure.
I'm thinking that the 1940 models had wine buttons, but the 1941 models had brown to match the new brown swirled escutcheon. I'm inclined to believe there wasn't much, if any, "cross-coloration" between the model years, even though the guy at Radio Daze said there was.
On ebay there is a 39-25 that seems to have the same (or very similar) escutheon and buttons as the 40-150, but it is hard to tell about the button color from the pictures.
The 39-25 and 39-30 did have wine colored buttons. I have restored a half dozen and all had remnants of wine buttons. Oddly, I have never seen a 40 model in person... only in photos.
All of the 41 models that I have restored have had the brown buttons.
It appears that 1939 and 1940 models used translucent wine pushbuttons; 1941 models use brown.
The 1939 pushbuttons are different from the 1940 buttons; they are wider on the back end and made to be retained with metal clips. The 1940 pushbuttons are made like the 1941 buttons, except that they are wine instead of brown.
A 40-150 or 40-155 table model set looks really cool in operation with a set of reproduction wine pushbuttons; the back lighting also lights up the buttons.