Now I'm sitting here ready to compose the price report, and I can't positively identify the radio! It sure looks like what would be named a 624B, based on the chassis layouts in Ron's book. It's in a tombstone cabinet and it matches the 1936 6-tube layout of the 624. But nothing like that is shown on RMorg, in the gallery here, or in Ron's book.
Possibly, but it seems pretty factory. Would it have been possible to "custom order" a 624 as a tombstone? Did Philco do things like that?
Or maybe this was an "early" version of the 624B before the rounded-top tombstone released in January 1936. Could it just be so uncommon that it hasn't shown up before? The early-'36 620B, 623B, and 642B all look identical, as do the half-year 623B, 624B, 625B, and 642B... Wouldn't an early-'36 624B have looked just like its three kin?
Philco did not do custom building/ordering, as far as I know.
Model 624 was introduced mid-season 1936 (December 1935/January 1936). Now, it could very well be that Philco had a few shouldered 620/623 cabinets left over and issued the first few 624Bs in the old cabinet before switching to the new, non-shouldered style. Philco pulled stunts like that many times during the 1930s (not documented yet obvious factory issued Franken-Philcos). I have one such example, a 200X cabinet containing a 201 chassis - and with factory labels inside the cabinet indicating that it is a 201X.
In a situation where the vibrator is not operational or not repairable a filament transformer with adequate voltage and current rating can be substituted in place of the vibrator. I did that years ago with a Buick radio from the early 1950s. It made a nice sensitive AM radio with good selectivity and more than adequate sound using a 8 inch PM speaker in a separate cabinet. There are ways to repair the vibrators as long as the precious metal of the contacts are not worn completely away or the reeds not damaged or fractured.
Oh you can work with or around the vibrator power supply, but I think that whomever paid $81.49 for that 624B, plus shipping, is not going to be very happy when they find out that they the set they just bought involves an engineering project just to use it. You can buy a 620B or a 630B for the same amount, often less, with no reverse engineering involved. That set, in that condition, along with the rough looking 623B that sold recently, should not have broken the $40-50 mark, if more people would do their research first and not impulse buy they would not have. Those sets would be $10-30 at a swap meet, and even then they may just sit there.
I can still recall the 623B, a full on battery set, that someone had bought off of fleabay last year not realizing what it was for some reason. Even though the auction said that it was a model 623B and had photos of the back with a battery cable in plain view, he was enraged at having bought a farm set. He then resold it on fleabay to one of our members at a loss apparently, stating that it was only good for parts. This is all nonsense of course, it's not difficult to make a battery set operational, but you still don't want to pay an AC radio price for a set that needs an off board power supply constructed for it.
Regards
Arran
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