[DaleHCook]

I have looked through threads which I found in a search, and decided I might be best off with a new thread.

I have two Philco radios in my collection which I still need to restore - a 116-B and a 42-355. My workbench is pretty small, and I prefer to not have space taken up by a cabinet with an electrodynamic speaker, which would have to be connected to the chassis for the chassis to be powered up. I have designed and installed in my shop my Universal Shop Speaker and Dummy Field Coil which takes the place of the electrodynamic speaker with its output transformer and, most importantly, its field coil.

One thing which that system requires for each chassis being worked on is a cable with a speaker plug for that chassis on one end and banana plugs to connect to my system on the other end. Most of my Zeniths use 4-pin and 5-pin tube sockets on the back of the chassis for their speaker cables, so making up those cables was a breeze. Finding speaker plugs to match my Philcos is another matter. The 116-B has a large 4-pin plug which is not the same as the 4-pin tube bases with which I am familiar. The 42-355 uses the ubiquitous Philco 5-pin plug which is similar to but smaller than a 5-pin tube base.

I will buy a 4-pin plug from the auction site (if it is still there Wednesday when I get my Social Security payment). I don't see any of the Philco 5-pin plugs there. Do any of you have a source for those? I can make one (I have lots of pins removed from scrapped-out military connectors) but it will take some work. Does anyone have the dimensions for the 5-pin? It would be a big help if I have to make my own, and I might want to make variations for other Philcos which use the same plug with different wiring.

[DaleHCook]

I found what I believe to be the correct 5-pin Philco speaker plugs on the auction site by widening the search criteria. They should arrive on Saturday while I am at the hamfest in Stanardsville, VA. I'm not an amateur operator (I've been a commercial operator for more than 50 years), but hamfests are a great place to find instruments, books and manuals, components, and wire and cable. Among other things I'll be looking for a number of things that I need to build several cables for my Universal Shop Speaker and Dummy Field Coil, as well as to expand that system to handle dual and tapped field coils.

I need to build two cables with the 5-pin Philco connectors. One is the 4-wire cable for my Philco 42-355. The other is a 5-wire cable for my GE F-63. If the plugs I'm awaiting are correct I will have a number of spares that I can trade for other plugs that I need.

The 4-wire cable for my Philco 116-B is due on Monday. All I will be using is the plug, since the wiring for my test cable will be made with test lead wire, as are all of my speaker test cables for any chassis with an electrodynamic speaker.

[DaleHCook]

The 4-pin D shaped phenolic plug for the Philco 116-B is fine - I'll start putting that cable together this week. When that is ready I want to take new photos of the Universal Shop Speaker and Dummy Field Coil and revise the web pages for it - those pages have had only one update in recent years and need a new update.

The 5-pin plugs which I got are wrong for the Philco 42-355 and the GE F-63. I'm getting ready to make a custom speaker plug for my Howard 425-A (Admiral used the same plug on some sets), so I'll add the plugs for the 116-B and F-63 to the list of plugs which I need to fabricate.

[DaleHCook]

The cable for the Philco 116-B is nearly done. I haven't found a source for the speaker plugs for the Philco 42-355 and the GE F-63 so I may have to have them fabricated by a friend who has extensive CAD software and a 3D printer (I have pins that I can reuse).