[Marsupial]

I have paid 1$ plus shipping trough the canadian borders - 99 cents initial bid on an AS-IS ebay auction. Turns out everything works but the CD player; i've rerouted it to an aux-in jack for MP3 players.

NostalgiaRadioTime, that connector is almost identical to what was between the record-changer and radio chassis on my 47-1230 - I guess they were pretty much standard already. It is the female connector that I found more puzzling.

Here's a picture of mine.

[NostalgiaRadioTime]

Yes, I have the same set up on my 47-1230. My 1940 Coronado has an RCA jack built into the chassis from factory new, meant for use with an external phonograph. In fact, there is even a phono button on the dial next to the station pre-sets, so it was the perfect set up for use with this M-15 phonograph.

These connectors were developed in the late 1930's by (who else?) RCA, and were quickly adopted for use by other brands as well. Apparently not Philco, however, until after the war, but I'm probably wrong on this. Perhaps the Beam-of-Light phonographs used them in the early 40's?

[Arran]

No, the beam of light phonographs used a connector and socket that was proprietary to Philco, they did not use RCA jacks. Some Canadian market Philco models did use RCA jacks and sockets but not the Canadian versions of U.S models.
Philco had a adversarial relationship with RCA, much more so on the U.S side, that was why you didn't see Magic Eyes or metal tubes in Philco radios as original equipment. Philco wasn't about to pay royalties to RCA unless they absolutely had to, so the last thing they would do is use an RCA phono jack. Why they didn't come up with their own alternative like they did with other things only they could answer. But it wasn't just with RCA patents they had a similar attitude when it came to Armstrong's FM patents, that was why they came out with some funky detector circuits using things like the FM1000 and XXFM tubes.
The Bing Crosby I have, it's called a model 76 in Canada as opposed to a 46-1201 like in the U.S, has everything hard wired, no plugs of any sort. This was rather short sighted as you need to desolder those wires, along with those for the loop antenna, out of the cabinet just to remove the radio chassis. As a result I think that I may have been the first person to pull the chassis out since the set left the factory in 1946-47.
Regards
Arran

[morzh]

Well....Philco 80 does not have a speaker plug. Guess how convenient that was to remove.
And it is understandable - connectors are expensive.