[Guest]

I have a 41-608. And yes, Ron did restore this one (chassis wise), and yes it still plays just fine, thanks to him. Now my question is I have the original turntable, but of course the tone arm is long gone. I bet you guys saw the one on the big auction house go for $177 !!!!! recently. What was the common retrofit, as it would appear I will not be able to:
A: find one
B :afford the ridiculous prices I have seen for these
I had read about the fact the tonearm was not that reliable, and it was common in the late 40's to swap it out.
Thank you All
Mike

[Ron Ramirez]

Hi Mike

I, too, have seen Beam of Light turntables without their tone arms. I honestly don't know why that seems to have happened fairly often. My own 42-1011's changer was missing its tonearm; I have since acquired another complete changer and installed it in place of the partial unit, although I have not had time to restore it.

The changers probably bring big buck$$$ because many of the surviving radio-phonographs are either missing their changers, or missing parts such as tone arms. Supply and demand, ya know.

I've never read anything about the Beam of Light tone arms being unreliable, but it is well known that the 1942 changer and its two-speed bell drive was not reliable. After the war, Philco offered a retro-kit to make the 1942 changers into single-speed rim drive units.

I haven't heard - or read - anything bad about the 1941 changer.

[Doug Houston]

Possibly, I can shed a ray of light here.

During WWII, a resident Philco engineer here in Detroit, gave me a Philco changer and a U-2 speaker that he'd had laying around. Why the changer was removed from a set, I have no idea, but I wasn't about to ask silly questions! It was the Webster-Chicago 3 post changer that was used by Philco, Stromberg-Carlson, Magnavox and Zenith in their upper level models. It made extensive use of die castings in its construction. That's why you see few, if any of these changers today. All companies except Philco used crystal pickups. Philco had the BOL pickup, of course. It was a nice changer, but tricky to keep in adjustment.
The changer, as with others, was set up for installation of a record cutting option. Some of the W-C changers had rim drive turntables, and others (as Philco) had gear drives.

I recently found one of these changers that I'd like to use in a prewar Magnavox that I have without a changer, but broken parts make its use impractical just now.

The other 2 post changers of '41 were good changers, and most still work O.K. I believe that Philco's were done also by Webster-Chicago.

[Ron Ramirez]

Mike, I should mention that it was Doug who first told me about the unreliable 1942 rim drive changers, many years ago. He is quite knowledgeable on this subject.

I find it interesting that the three post changers were used in the high end Philcos, yet the two post units turned out to be the more reliable changers. I did not know that the changers were made by Webster-Chicago. Many thanks for that info.

[Guest]

@Doug Houston:

I've got a WC three post changer with the BOL tonearm in my 41-616 and it all works pretty good. I hear you about the die-cast parts. I had to re-cast many of them myself as they had just about crumbled away when I got the thing. I stabilized the parts with epoxy then used them to make the molds for the new parts. The tonearm pickup was dead too so I made a new one out of a small photocell. The new pickup is much less alignment critical due to its increased sensitivity so I was able to replace the special philco tonearm lamp with a more readily available alternative.

It's about ready for it's 10 year overhaul though: the cork clutches have dried up and need replacment and the motor to turntable coupler needs to be redesigned. I wasn't able to save the original coupler so I machined a new one out of piece of bronze. However this was the wrong approach. The original had a rubber gasket which actually coupled the motor to the turntable drive mechanism, this to nullify minor misalignment issues. So the result of my redesign work was an increased warp as the turntable speed varied. I'm planning on getting the record cutter working again so this needs to be fixed.

Still, its a wonder to watch the thing handle an intermixed stack of 10 and 12" records....

[49Stude63]

The 41-611P that I have has the BOM arm but is missing the swivel mount, so if anyone has an extra swivel mount let me know the cost. I have a friend that does a lot of intricate machining work so he told me to pull one of the pivots and he would make copies for me. If they work I will see what he will charge for them, they may look non-original but who is going to crawl under the cabinet to check them out. The one I have is the 3 poster unit, very nice radio the Ron is trying to talk me out of.

[Ron Ramirez]

Hey Claude,

I think your 41-611 already has a good home there in Georgia and perhaps should stay there. When it comes to consoles, I really don't have room for any more. The 41-611 is a really nice piece of furniture, though.