08-31-2018, 03:43 AM
No;
An RE-45 was not a record cutter in the original sense, but they did come with a microphone, and a weight for the tone arm, to enable cutting, what I would assume, with pre grooved blanks. It may have worked it was probably best suited for dictation, and not music. The microsynchronous tuner was an interesting idea mechanically, but I would not call it state of the art since it was still a TRF employing #26 triodes, rather then screen grid tubes like #24s. It's rather odd that they kept the electrical design past the 1929-30 model year, the Radiola 44 used screen grid tubes, other Radiolas were superhets in that year, (most were made by G.E.) maybe Victor had a large stock of #26s RCA wanted to use up?
It's interesting that you should bring up these being the last products brought out under the Victor name. In the U.S that may have been true, but in Canada they were marketing radios and radio phonographs under the Victor name only up until the 1934-35 model year. I would guess that this was because of the dealer network and sales agreements they had in Canada, much like how they had retrimmed Mercury cars sold as Monarchs at Ford dealers, and retrimmed Fords sold as Meteors at Mercury dealers.
Regards
Arran
An RE-45 was not a record cutter in the original sense, but they did come with a microphone, and a weight for the tone arm, to enable cutting, what I would assume, with pre grooved blanks. It may have worked it was probably best suited for dictation, and not music. The microsynchronous tuner was an interesting idea mechanically, but I would not call it state of the art since it was still a TRF employing #26 triodes, rather then screen grid tubes like #24s. It's rather odd that they kept the electrical design past the 1929-30 model year, the Radiola 44 used screen grid tubes, other Radiolas were superhets in that year, (most were made by G.E.) maybe Victor had a large stock of #26s RCA wanted to use up?
It's interesting that you should bring up these being the last products brought out under the Victor name. In the U.S that may have been true, but in Canada they were marketing radios and radio phonographs under the Victor name only up until the 1934-35 model year. I would guess that this was because of the dealer network and sales agreements they had in Canada, much like how they had retrimmed Mercury cars sold as Monarchs at Ford dealers, and retrimmed Fords sold as Meteors at Mercury dealers.
Regards
Arran