If the text would be lost in a photo album, would an alternative be, to start a new thread labelled "Roaring 20's Superhets - Part 2" and so on (Part 3, Part 4.......Part x) - with a maximum of 3-4 pages in each thread? You would only need to load a few pages at a time. Moderators could lock the old threads at pre-determined no. of pages?

Just an idea.

Are we done talking about 20a Super-Hets?
Surely not...

Of all the supers I have, this is my fav.
It's a Leutz model L. As I understand it, it
was the first super-het avaliable to the public.
C.R. Leutz modified Armstrong's design and
made this radio. This one and it's twin brother
were built in the E.I.S. shop to test the kit.
It was later sold to Clemson Agriculteral Collage,
now Clemsom Univ. for use in their
Physics Lab.

The 2 cabinets are intended to sit end to end
so the main radio would be 80" long, then
you add the WE 7A amp you needed since
the radio had only one stage of audio.
The loop antenna is about 4 foot sq so in all
there about 12 feet of radio by the time
you get it all set up.

We ran out of those 20's Super-hets!

Duane, Dale, and you, Ron, got'em ALL!!!

Keep'em comin', boys!!!

Something I don't understand Rick,
on your fantastic Super-Het photo
gallery, you don't have a Leutz-L, the king
of the supers.
You have that grainy copy of an old photo,
but nothing showing a nice one,
what's up with that??
I believe you could find a nice one if you
looked around a little...

.


Duuhhhh, Ya think??? I Wonder, who da ya spose might have one?

I don't know for sure, but if we put our thinking
caps on we might be able to come up with
something...

I will contribute my RCA Radiola 82 radio. I have the tuner and amp chassis working properly with a good speaker provided by a fellow forum member. I am waiting on my uncle to get over some health issues so I can go pick up the cabinet which according to my uncle is in excellent condition. He originally got the two chassis for free from someone who was going to throw them away. I asked my uncle if the guy had the cabinet and much to my surprise he had it in excellent condition and guess what it was free as well . I have no pictures yet.

I appreciate your interest, but please note the title of this thread, it's
"Roaring 20s Superhets"
I think the Radiola 82 was made in 1930 and is an AC set.

Here's my contribution to this thread. It's a 1926 Buckwalter "Supertone" superhetrodyne. It's a rather
unique receiver in that no soldering is required in it's construction. The baseboard has grooves cut and filled
in with an electrically conductive material which was applied as a paste and allowed to harden. In essence
this could be considered as a forerunner of the PC board. There was one other manufacturer that took a
similar approach but used solid strips of metal that were bolted onto the baseboard. The reason why
Buckwalter designed this radio, in this fashion, was to make it as easy and foolproof as possible for anyone to
construct it. All that was needed was a screwdriver and a hex nut driver. I tested the
conductive strips on my set and, at most, there is about a 10th of an ohm in resistance present so they do
work pretty much as well as copper wires.

I have totally stripped down my set to the nuts and bolts, cleaned every little part and carefully put it back
together again.




Nice straight forward chassis. Note the "Supertone" IF transformers and the connector posts for the loop antenna are the stand alone posts situated on the far opposite ends of the chassis.


When the set is running, all of the tubes filaments are set at the full 5 volts. There are no filament voltage dropping resistors or filament controls on this set. To run the set on 6 volts for the filament supply would require an external ballast resistor. The two controls on the front panel work the bias voltages to the IF transformers. Because the ground line is positive, the 01A and 12A audio tubes derive -5 volts bias to the grids straight from the the - side of the filament line so no C battery connections are required.


The phone jack also acts as the power On/Off switch. To turn on the radio requires a speaker to be plugged in and to turn off the radio requires to unplug the speaker.


Notice how the antenna dial and osc. dial are very different in their scales.

I dunno, it kinda makes sense to me since you can only view 1 page at a time.

Problem with photo albums is they lack the informative posts that talk about the sets being pictured. Its nice to have all that in one spot.

What some forums do when there are a ton of pics is edit the thread name to say something like: "Subject ____ [56k Beware]" so people on dialup know to expect a lot of pics by clicking the link/

That's a neat set. I always thought it was
interesting how some companies tried
to make mechanical fastners work for electrical
connections.
My glass cased set that isn't a super-het
uses nut and bolt clamps for a bus wired
set. Neat looking but I'll bet it would be a
nightmare to keep all the connections tight.

Oh ok. I didn't know when exactly it was made.

Ron, your Leutz Model L would probably be the centerpiece of any collection. Any chance we could see an interior view? I have a poor mans Model L, which I may post photos of.

Michael, the Supertone is awesome (as are all the other radios on your website)!

Duane

Tube Radio and all,

The RCA model 82 (AR 892) fits this thread accurately as it was introduced on September 14, 1928. (This info taken from AWA / OTB article (November 1987). "Release Date For Popular RCA Receivers And Speakers" By Dick Ramsley and Bob Allen. Page11.)

My notes from my database might give some insight about the set:

"Essentially the same chassis as the Radiola 60, but more expensive burled-Walnut highboy cabinet and a dynamic speaker. Used 8-UY227, 1-UX280 (power amp), 2-UX281 (power supply), and 1-UX250 (as part of the dynamic speaker circuit). Third series of Super. No untuned, 2 tuned, 2 IFs, 1 Audio. $375.00. IFs peak at 180 KC."

-----------------

The Clarence Buckwalter Supertone, introduced in August 1925, could be built in two versions that I've seen. Indiana Radios has the version where the IFs are on the top of the baseboard. With the other, it was recommended they be placed under the baseboard for a cleaner look.

There was a reference to the Buckwalter "Burad Supertone" that had only six tubes, but more info eludes me. The company was headquartered in Chicago.

A reference I have says iron IFs peaked at 40 KC.

A very good article was written a number of years ago by Wayne Gilbert which is found at the link below:

http://www.nostalgiaair.org/references/articles/theflash/flash13.htm

Rick

If that's true then my vote is to change
the title of the thread to
"Roaring 20s BATTERY Super-Hets"

Once they addd AC power they got BORING ! ! !

I said:

I guess I was talking crap. You only load the thread "one page at a time" as it is. Please disregard.

The radios being added to this thread continue to be amazing, and the advertising copy and so forth is an important and very interesting part of the history.

I would certainly include AC superheterodyne sets from the 1920's, as they show even further achievements by saving owners the cost and nuisance of dealing with batteries.

My radiola 80 uses two 545 tubes in the audio power amp.

I could always make the radio battery powered

I've posted these pictures before, but here are pictures of my Lecault L-2 once again. (I fixed the broken links to the pictures and also added the advertisement Rick mentions in the next post)















Here is the Ad that Rick posted regarding this radio:

OOOppss...JOHN,

You don't have a Lacault Phenix L-2, you have a much rarer model L-1.

The oscillator & antenna coils in that style make it a "1", introduced early in the Superhet world, March 1924. The air core IFs and filter run at 115 KC which was very high for those early days.

The L-2 was introduced in May of '24 and the last ad I found for the L-1 was in October of that year.

Love seeing that L-1 as you don't see many of them.

Lacault started a long dynasty of good radios with that set.

By the way, your radio is one of the earliest as shown in ths ad from Radio Broadcast, July 1924. They're exactly the same!



Rick