[Radioroslyn]

The difficult thing to know on the early Philco sets (the ones that use directly heated tubes) where to connect the - meter lead to match reading on the listing. Most would think chassis ground. But not so much. It could be the hv ct or one of the 80 tube's plates.

I ran up with this in a model 20 in the output stage. If I measured the plate voltage it was high and the grid was low from chassis ground. Measuring from the filament gave a much better picture of what was going on in terms of voltage on the plate and grid. They were well within range according to the rca tube manual

As for the low volume it might be because of the resistance coupling of the two audio stages. Your not getting the benefit of the step up voltage offered by using transformers. I've used these to replace those types  https://www.tubesandmore.com/products/tr...tage-10-ma  Also you might try connecting your ant to each of the grid of the 26's one by one. You may find one of the amp isn't working or a bad ant coil (easy to fix).

Have fun chasing electrons.