[Doug Houston]

Back at it, Ron.

I don't go downstairs often, though it's no problem. I have a chairlift, and I can breeze up or down like nothing. Last night, I pulled out the prewar Magnavox book. It covers their products from 1937 through 1942. They had an amazing amount of radios and phono combinations in many more forms than we might expect.

There were several chassis in the book, that resemble the one in the "new" Belvedere. They used two 5Y3 rectifiers in some of them, with the P-P 6L6 outputs. The cased transformer next to the 6L6's is the output transformer. The inputs to the 6L6's are R-C coupled. The plate winding on the OP transformer is split, and those chassis had some rather elaborate feedback circuitry. I have to get back into the garage unit where the Mag is, and get the CR number off of it. Some of, but not all of the P-P 6L6 chassis are: CR161; CR 179C. There are some others. In my 37-42 Magnavox book, there is a chart, like in the post war book, which tells which chassis, changers, and FM chassis are used in each model. for some reason I can't understand, there are probably 10 model numbers for each named model. Thus, there are several model numbers for the Belvederes like I have. There is a similar page for the Regencies like yours. Oh, by the way, the prewar Regencies were called: Regent; not Regency. That book has pictures of the prewar sets, as does the postwar book.

The postwar book is not complete. Bill Cahill's chassis is not in my copy, for instance.

While I was in the basement, looking at some of the Magnavox things, I thought to look at my Windsor. It has the FM band on the main chassis. I sort of expect that all of the Windsors were that way. I wish I knew more about those sets. They were the hilltop of fine radios, right up there with the Philco 690's, the RCA D22's and Berkshires, the Capeharts, big Strombergs and the Scotts. I don't condemn the guys who like the pink plastic clock radios, but I pity them for not having experienced the really good stuff.

At one Elgin meet (year?), the Kleinschmidt boys did a presentation about the finest radios you could have bought in 1948. They showed chassis and changers of the sets. One was a Scott 800C, Capehart, RCA Berkshire, I can't come up with a fourth. Anyhoo, I commented to a friend: I have all of them. That stuff takes up space, but the cars take up more, yet!