[Nathan Slingerland]

My Philco 16B 'shouldered' tombstone has a rather unique looking switch for the automatic volume control (switch on the side for enabling or disabling inter-station silencing):

   

Could this be original (it is different from the other 16Bs I have seen) or is it an antique repair job?

[Ron Ramirez]

Repair job. The original would not have had a slot cut in it like that.

Oh, and the switch in your 16B-125 is for bass compensation, not AVC.

[Radioroslyn]

Looks like a switch from a National Co communications set. The notch is there so it can be flipped by rotating shaft. Used for the off/on, send/receive, standby, and bfo.

Terry

[Nathan Slingerland]

Interesting - OK. I wonder why that switch needed replacing - seems like something that wouldn't get used often.

Ron - RE: the purpose of the switch. Mine is actually one of the 16B tombstones with a Code 121 chassis in it. AFAICT it was this way from the factory. It has a fully finished wood plug to reduce the size of the tuning shaft opening (earlier thread) - and re-drilled chassis bolts holes that look to me like they were professionally done - or at least done before the cabinet was finished. The sticker in the cabinet still says Code 125.

[Ron Ramirez]

...Mine is actually one of the 16B tombstones with a Code 121 chassis in it. AFAICT it was this way from the factory. It has a fully finished wood plug to reduce the size of the tuning shaft opening (earlier thread) - and re-drilled chassis bolts holes that look to me like they were professionally done...

By the time Philco introduced the shouldered 16B cabinet (around January 1935), the old 5-band chassis had been out of production for three months or so, and they made over 18,000 of the "peaked" cabinets. I would say 95 to 99% of those had the newer 4-band chassis. So once the shouldered cabinet went into production, Philco would have only had 4-band chassis in production.

The point? Any competent, skilled woodworker could have made the plug for that larger hole for the tuning shaft, as well as redrilled mounting holes in the bottom. I do not believe this was done at the factory, but by someone after the fact who had a 16-121 chassis and a 16-125 shouldered cabinet, and was skilled enough to perform a shotgun wedding of the two.

Finally, if it had been done at the factory (and it was not, in my opinion), they would have tried harder to match the surrounding veneer. An at-home "weekend warrior"? Not as likely to try to make the plug match the veneer.

[Nathan Slingerland]

Thanks Ron. I'll defer to your analysis of the back story of course.

[Arran]

...Mine is actually one of the 16B tombstones with a Code 121 chassis in it. AFAICT it was this way from the factory. It has a fully finished wood plug to reduce the size of the tuning shaft opening (earlier thread) - and re-drilled chassis bolts holes that look to me like they were professionally done...

By the time Philco introduced the shouldered 16B cabinet (around January 1935), the old 5-band chassis had been out of production for three months or so, and they made over 18,000 of the "peaked" cabinets. I would say 95 to 99% of those had the newer 4-band chassis. So once the shouldered cabinet went into production, Philco would have only had 4-band chassis in production.

The point? Any competent, skilled woodworker could have made the plug for that larger hole for the tuning shaft, as well as redrilled mounting holes in the bottom. I do not believe this was done at the factory, but by someone after the fact who had a 16-121 chassis and a 16-125 shouldered cabinet, and was skilled enough to perform a shotgun wedding of the two.

Finally, if it had been done at the factory (and it was not, in my opinion), they would have tried harder to match the surrounding veneer. An at-home "weekend warrior"? Not as likely to try to make the plug match the veneer.

Ron;
  As most of us know Philco had it's own cabinet plant, so they could, and often did, make cabinets to order. Because of this there would be no reason to go back and plug control shaft holes, or redrill a cabinet bottom to fit a different chassis, if they had left over chassis then they would have just made a short production run of cabinets with the right sized holes in the right places.
Regards
Arran

[Ron Ramirez]

...if they had left over chassis then they would have just made a short production run of cabinets with the right sized holes in the right places.

Right.

I have a 201 chassis that was factory installed in a 200X cabinet. The cabinet has the original 200X sticker inside, and Philco placed a 201 sticker on top of the 200 sticker. Steve Geary (azenithnut on the other forum) was here some months back, and he brought along a 201 chassis. I had originally thought that mine was made when Philco stopped making the 200 and started making the 201. However, my 201 chassis has a higher serial number than Steve's, so mine must have been a case of finding a few leftover 200 cabinets after production was underway on the 201. Since the 200 and 201 have identical knob spacing, and the chassis are interchangeable, Philco just covered the 200X stickers in the cabinets with "Chassis 201" stickers and sent them out to be sold...