[MrFixr55]

Congrats, PercyJD!!

Sorry, I didn't think alignment because when you touched the grid, you got good volume. This is a deceptively simple set, and when I ran into my first 80 (the predecessor to your 84), it messed up my head because there was no IF Stage. Do you know which adjustment did the most good? Was it C5, C13, C15 or C17? I would think C5, but in an Autodyne, anything is possible.

I have an RCA R28 ca 1933. At the time, this was RCA's cheapest set and was introduced in the throes of the Great Depression, at a price of $28.50. It, too, has no IF Tube, just the transformer, but has a 58 RF Amp before the 2A7 Pentagrid Convertor, so this is a 5 tube set. When the Philco 80 (similar circuit to your 84 but with tetrodes instead of pentodes for the 1st and 2nd Detectors) was introduced at $18.99, it was meant to be a "loss leader" to get people into the store where the sales rep would attempt to "upsell" the Customer to a better and more expensive model). However, the set was a hit. RCA had to drop the price of the R28 to $25.99. Philco countered by dropping the cost of the 80 to $14.99. RCA dropped their price too $19.99 and likely lost money on every set sold. Philco kept this model in one form or another for an additional 4 years with the 37-84 being the last iteration and sold a lot of them to the consternation of RCA and several others.

BTW, nice job on the wiring. With cloth covered wiring most leave it in place unless it is deteriorated. The real nightmare for restorers came a few years when rubber wire came out. The rubber insulation almost always deteriorates, cracks and falls off, requiring rewiring.