[PTurney]

Hi,

I've just completed the restoration of a Philco 19LZ (the one with the speaker built into the tuning cabinet) and have since been wondering about how the sound is meant to come out of this thing. http://www.tuberadioland.com/philco19LZ_main.html

When placed against an easy chair the loudspeaker faces directly into the side of the chair, muffling the sound. Not too bad if the chair has open arms, I guess. However this raises the question of others in the room - it occurs to me that since the radio has grilles on all sides, that they should be open. When I restored the set, without so much as a thought I covered all the grille openings, except the one with the speaker, with cloth mounted on a continuous sheet of cardboard.

Does anyone know whether all or more than one of the grilles should be open acoustically, thereby allowing sound from the rear of the speaker to enter the room and not get muffled into the side of a chair? I know the sound can come out the bottom, but somehow that's not the same.

The grille boards and cloths were not present when I came by the set, so I was not able to tell how it was originally set up.

Incidentally, this unit has surprisingly nice sound quality when placed in an open area.

Paul