[Arran]

Well, Arran, when these sets were new, all Philco cared about was getting the thing assembled. They were not concerned with the poor repairman who would have to work on these cheaply made sets down the road.

And yes, from 1939 (mid-1938 ) on, Philco's products became noticeably more cheaply made. Actually, I think the cheapening began in 1937 (mid-1936), with the introduction of those awful RF units; became more pronounced in the 1938 season; and definitely so from the 1939 season onward. It was in the 1939 season that these crappy golden yellow sockets first appeared. Plus rubber-covered wires, which I would guess were probably cheaper than the cloth-covered wires?

I am guessing the same was probably true of Electrohome. Once the bean counters take control, quality goes out the window.

Ron;
  Oddly enough Dominion Electrohome, which was famous for making private label sets, used all cloth covered wire in their radios, and Canadian Westinghouse tubes, I'm not sure who made the speakers but that seems to have varied. I'm not sure about who made the power and output transformers either but I've never run into a bad one of either so those must have been made properly. In the set that I am currently working on the trimmers and padders were made by E.F Johnson, and the capacitors made by Aerovox or Solar.  I think that since Electrohome had their own cabinet plant and a proper sheet metal shop in house it looks like the tubes sockets was the only corner cutting they engaged in, that is assuming that these sockets were chosen because they were cheaper and not out of some engineer's personal preference. 
 In the case of the set I'm working on it's rather a poor design mechanically, a 3'' deep chassis where the converter tube is right in the rear corner, and there are terminal strips mounted along the inside rear apron below other things, so that means that I have had to use some funny angles to get to the 6SA7 tube socket terminals. Most of their sets have a fairly open design with chassis maybe half that deep or less. One thing I will say is that when they are working properly the performance is decent, they used pretty standard RCA style circuits, so they obviously didn't cut corners on the front end designs.
Regards
Arran