1929 Victor RE-45 TRF with 245 amplifier, Electrola & Speaker

Victor Talking Machine RE-45 Console, with Micro-synchronous AM Tuner, high-power Amplifier Model 245, 9" Electrodynamic Speaker, Induction Disc driven record player with magnetic pick-up, best-seller of the new Christmas 1929 RCA-Victor program

In a Nutshell:
I consider this radio as one of the brightest milestones in radio technology and radio history. The following detailed documentation summarizes my own research into, and experience with this radio, which is free to be quoted with citation (same for pictures).
Up for auction is the whole thing. It's a mint console radio, it's 145 pounds, it's hard to ship. From obvious reasons I hesitate to take it into pieces and sell it in parts. I will sell the radio to a buyer who will pick it up in Vancouver, BC, Canada, or makes his (her) own arrangements to have it shipped elsewhere. The only options are "Buy Now" or "Make a Best Offer".

Here are the specifications:

Gallery: (watch descriptive legends under pictures - and go to my scripted Supersize Gallery)

Detailed Description

Introduction:
From a press communiqué of January 1929: "A plan calling for the unification of the Victor Talking Machine Company with the Radio Corporation of America was approved recently at meetings of the Boards of the two companies. The unification includes the holdings of Victor Talking Machine Company in subsidiary and associated companies throughout the world".
Unification? Are you kidding? RCA on March 15th, 1929 purchased Victor and guess for how much? 154 million (see also *footnote*), and guess why so much?
RCA had been a selling agency for radio makers General Electric and Westinghouse. Victor had been founded in 1901 by the phonograph pioneers Berliner and Johnson. In the 1920's people started to abandon listening to phonographs and tried, with their early battery sets, to tune-in all the new radio stations. RCA had started its Radiola line of radios in 1924 with an unprecedented advertising campaign. But in the following 2 years Victor was still able to counter-attack with its very successful Electrola and Orthophonic Victrola lines of phonographs. So, it was not about radio or phonograph, it was about having both, and so Victor collaborated with RCA to build Radiola-Victrola combo consoles.
Late but not too late also Victor reacted to the change in public interest, and in mid 1929 came out with their Rube Goldberg approach (he discovered difficult ways to achieve easy results, thank you Doug Houston from ARC for this applicable connection) to the problem of a stable one-knob TRF (Tuned Radio Frequency) receiver, the micro-synchronous neutrodyne. Victor had to do so, because RCA owned the patent of Armstrong's heterodyne receiver and did not license it to anybody until 1930. The Victor brand was so established and their micro-synch principle was so advanced, that RCA-Victor had to announce the console radios R-32, RE-45, R-52, and RE-75 (E stands for inclusion of an electrically amplified talking machine Electrola) for the Christmas season 1929 under the Victor name alone. Even more impressive is that even one year later the succeeding models R-15, RE-17, R-35, R-39 and RE-57 (in E-models home recording added) were still sold as Victor (only) models.
154 million was cheap for a bunch of bright engineers capable of designing a micro-synchronous TRF, a Model 245 amplifier, a truly efficient electrodynamic Rice-Kellogg speaker, and an induction disc driven (no belt, no rubber, no failure, see pict.s 8,9) Electrola with magnetic pick-up. Sales of this line in 1929 totalled more than 50 million dollars for about 300'000 units, the largest in the company's history. The new micro-synch owners, even after 5 or 10 years, lauded the outstanding reception and selectivity and the ease of use of their tuners, the exceptional reproduction quality and volume reserve of the 245 amplifiers, and the surprisingly clean bass of their huge Burtex coned electrodynamic speakers. Please have a look at pict. 34, showing the 1929 Christmas ad and an early 1930 ad cashing in on the initial selling success.

*Footnote*: You may presume that the aquisition of Victor was the reason, that in the very same week RCA stocks rose by 50%. But you are wrong: Wall Street had been (then legally) manipulated by its brokerage pool tycoons Michael Meehan, Jesse Livermore and Charles Mitchell, causing a mini-crash in the following week and finally the big one on black Thursday, Oct.24th, 1929, when RCA stocks plunged over the following weekend from 110 to 26 points.

About the micro-synchronous tuner:
For radio basics you may want to read first the chapter "For the technical historians only" below. The micro-synchronous tuning principle refers to the way, the RF filters of a TRF (Tuned Radio Frequency) receiver are coupled and differentially fine-tuned over the whole frequency range of the BC band. As you can see from pict.s 19 to 22 (click on animation 22) four individually shielded butterfly shaped tuning capacitors are connected by a common disk, the rotation angle of which is set by the slide rule dial knob. Fine-tuning is obtained with a set of little screws, differentially changing at 5 points the local radius of the disk, which controls additional degrees of freedom of the scissor-shaped mechanics. Each filter can be neutralized by tuning its own bypass capacitor to minimum noise volume, when the corresponding tube is replaced by a dummy without heater. Excellent sensitivity is combined with remarkable selectivity by the large number of 5 RF stages, each equipped with a 26 tube. As detector Victor used the 27, released May 1927 by Westinghouse. It was the first standard tube with 5-pin socket, the first indirectly heated RCA tube, and the first 2.5Volt heated tube. The tuning knob when lifted slides across the 6" slit in a flash, and when rolled along the bottom allows vernier tuning (look at my movie by clicking on the third last thumbnail picture, pict.32). The top of the tuner chassis is covered with a chrome-plated shield plate with a wonderful, 6" by 5" large embossed HMV (Nipper) logo (pict.s 17,18). Pict.12 shows two dial windows, the lower one being the original one from 1929. The upper one stems from the 1930 follow-up model and looks nicer. Buyer has the choice.

About the amplifier and speaker:
Chester W. Rice and Edward W. Kellogg at General Electric in 1925 had published a research paper describing the basic principle of the direct-radiator (also often quoted as a dynamic or moving coil) loudspeaker (first commercial version in 1926 RCA's Radiola Model 104 speaker [250$!] with a 1-watt amplifier powering the Radiola 28 radio). The Victor speaker of these mic-synch models (pict.s 29,30), with its long voice coil and low resonance frequency suspension (heavy Burtex cone in high compliance velvet cloth surround), made full use of the simplicity of Rice-Kelloggs idea. It was far ahead of its time and far ahead of RCA's early dynamic speakers, which, since mostly used for table top radios were dictated (if not compromised) by space restrictions. This 9" electrodynamic speaker (the "electro-" standing for the fact, that it needs an extra coil [field coil] producing the transverse magnetic field instead of a permanent magnet, which simultaneously is the filter choke coil for the power supply) is heavy, as is the Model 245 amplifier, a transformer coupled 15 Watt (high-power in 1929!) amp. using a 26 driver and two 45's in push-pull configuration (pict.s 24-28). There are 245 models which are tamed with series resistors to protect the speaker from being blown! Please note the convenient and service-friendly coupling of all units by flat blade Jones connectors. Please also note that there are no extra electronic components added to the underground part of the amplifier (pict.26), normally indicating failure of one or the other component housed in the various cans on top.

Additional information:
http://www.davidsarnoff.org
http://www2.danbbs.dk/~erikoest/nipper.htm
http://www.nostalgiaair.org
http://www.radiolaguy.com
http://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/~reese/RC10/

For the technical historians only: A basic AM receiver (e.g. a crystal set) has an antenna, a RF oscillator, a (diode) detector and an audio stage. By using positive feedback and deForest's "audion" triode tube the "regenerative receiver" was introduced by Edwin Howard Armstrong (1890-1954) in 1913 and by adding several stages of RF amplification between the antenna and the detector, the TRF (Tuned Radio Frequency) receiver was developed by Ernst Alexanderson in 1916, resulting in very much increased sensitivity and selectivity. Early TRF's had as many tuning knobs as there were RF circuits, making tuning-in a station quite adventurous, and so later models had one-knob tuning, facing a mechanical nightmare to couple the tuning condensors (in my opinion the most sophisticated and stunning example being the radio on auction here). To avoid oscillations in the tuned circuits Louis Alan Hazeltine in 1922, invented the "neutrodyne" circuit. Already in 1918 Armstrong, expecting more and more AM stations to crowd the AM band, realized the shortcomings of the TRF principle (a. sensitivity varying over tuning range, b. mechanical nightmare of simultaneous tuning, c. selectivity not constant but proportional to frequency), and conceived the superheterodyne radio receiver principle, while serving in the Army Signal Corps in France. In a superheterodyne receiver the signal from the antenna is mixed with a RF carrier generated by an oscillator inside the receiver. The difference frequency (intermediate frequency or IF) is amplified by one or more IF amplifiers, thus avoiding all 3 problems of the TRF principle mentioned above. Armstrong sold the superheterodyne patent to the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) who used it to monopolize the market for this type of receiver until 1930. There were three ways to get a superhet: buy it from RCA (or one of their partners Westinghouse, AT&T and GE), buy a "kit" from the competitors or build one yourself. In the early 1930's, the superheterodyne receiver had ousted the TRF. Armstrong, who also was the inventor of FM in 1933, in grief and despair after being abandoned by his wife of 31 years, Marion (she was the secretary of the president of RCA, David Sarnoff) and tired from his life-long legal patent battles jumped from the window of his 13th-floor apartment in New York on Jan.31, 1954. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1980.

For the techies only: Since my "Accurate Instrument 157" tube tester cannot test 4 and 5 pin tubes, I used a self-made test setup to measure the transconductances (change in plate current for an incremental change in grid voltage) of all 10 (triode type) tubes. The setup consists of a high power variable AC-adaptor for filament voltages, a 250 Volt DC source, a few resistors, a potentiometer, and a multimeter. The µS (or µmho) values of all tubes are centered at their specifications, available at http://hereford.ampr.org. The tuner tubes are Westinghouse (3x26, 27) and Marconi (2x26), the amplifier tubes are Rogers (2x45) Philco (26) and Triad (80), all ST type (pict.15). I dedusted and cleaned the radio inside and outside and treated the two volume wire pots with contact spray. I did not reneutralize nor resynchronize the tuner, since it is working absolutely perfectly, outperforming all my 40's bakelite AM-only table tops. The radio is not humming (I verified the optimal setting of the two hum regulators in the tuner and the amplifier) and was working fine for a 48 hour burn-in test without any problems. The Electrola needed little attention, since it is working perfectly. A stroboscopic calibration paper disk (included) allowed fine-adjustment of 78 rpm speed. A new pack of 25 Pfantone Audio Loud Tone Needles is included as well.

For the Nipper fans only:
"His Master's Voice" (HMV) was the title of the second version of a painting by Francis Barraud (1855-1924), showing a dog (his late brother's dead stray fox-bull-poodle "Nipper") listening to a nice golden Berliner phonograph. The first version had been titled "Dog looking at and listening to a phonograph", which was a black Edison cylinder player. Both paintings were made in 1899, the second version was ordered and bought by William Barry Owen (cofounder of Gramophone Company Ltd. in London UK in 1898, as partner of the US Berliner Gramophone), together with the copyright (each for 50£) and in 1900 by Emil(e) Berliner (Barraud painted alltogether 14 copies for various subsidiaries), who used it as a trademark for their phonographs in the UK and USA, respectively. With time the trademark was passed over to the legal successors Victor Talking Machine, RCA-Victor, and dispersed more and more to EMI, HMV music shops in Commonwealth countries and Japan, JVC (Japan Victor Company), Thomson SA, GE, Bertelsmann, you name it. The original painting is owned by EMI. In USA the logo today is public domain. I counted 11 Nipper logos on this radio.

About my item:
The radio, amplifier, speaker and Electrola, forming the RE-45, are fully serviced and working. They are housed in a cabinet, which exhibits almost no signs of wear. All 4 parts of the radio are highly collectible from three obvious reasons: 1. the tuner, the amplifier and the speaker are each a feast for the eyes, they are well sealed and can be connected and used even without any cabinet. 2. the technical quality and originality of the Victor design together with a soft restoration back to its original optimal working condition and visual appearance makes it a decorative and usable commodity, again with or without the cabinet. 3. especially the amplifier 245 is a very sought after collectible, due to its high power, high quality output specifications and its futuristic Manhattan look. In particular when they come up pairwise for auction they consistently reach high bids. I may add, that today this 1929 series is much more sought-after than the 1930 series, because it features a sealed tuner with the nice Nipper steel plate, a separation of amplifier and speaker, and the E-models don't have the ballast of a (today unusable) record recorder.
The radio tunes in stations better than any other AM radio in my house, especially when equipped with a long wire at the antenna input. The sound of both, the radio and the Electrola, is full, powerful and well bass balanced (there is a tone control pot. at the amplifier [pict.27, bottom right]). If you consider using the phono input for connecting other devices, please be aware that you have to provide a volume control, as the Electrola phonograph does, since the radio's volume control is at its very front end (pict.23). The radio comes with an original 12 page "Instructions" Manual (see pict.31), a new pack of 25 Pfantone steel needles, a 78rpm calibration paper disc, and all connecting and mains cables.

Technical note on the 26 Driver tube: The filaments of all type 26 tubes (UX-226, 26 and others) are still heated directly (indirectly heated cathodes were already invented, but not yet patented in 1927). You may wonder how it is possible to use such a tube in a first audio stage without having the problem of excessive hum? Well the problem had been attacked by Westinghouse's Freeman and Wade since 1921, who realized that the oscillating voltage difference between the filament ends caused by its resistance can largely be canceled by a magnetically induced voltage, and that the problem is eased by using a very low heater voltage (the tube is heated with 1.5 Volt only).

Summary:
Here is a Victor RE-45, a 1929 historical and technical milestone in radio development, in mint original, working and serviced condition. A perfect Christmas present as it was 77 years ago. The successful buyer has to pick up the radio in or near Vancouver, BC, Canada or provide own shipping services. Preliminary enquiries to UPS and DHL indicate that shipping to e.g. New York will be around 180$ (including 1200$ insurance) plus crating. I will assist in shipping the radio to US destinations by driving the radio to Point Roberts, WA, and have it crated and sent by "TSB Shipping Services". Weights of the parts are given in both tables. High resolution versions of most pictures are on request. Please e-mail me before buying, if you have any questions.

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Note:
Apparently eBay tightened its Javascript policy by disallowing the useful and harmless image attribute style="width: ekspression (document.body.clientWidth/2)" [disguised], which I successfully used for 3 years to resize my pictures to any client screen and in case of a browser resize. The feature is still available in my Supersize Gallery. I tried a preliminary workaround. It works in Netscape7+ and in IE6+, the latter however requiring manual refresh after resize. Any comments very welcome.

Note 1, added on Oct.20^th: Concerning the question about shipping to California. Here is what TSB-Shipping Point Roberts tells me: FEDEX is cheapest with 155$. This does not include weight of packing material, which has to be less than 5 pounds, because there is a weight limit of 150 pounds total. TSB estimates 2 hours work (40$) to crate the radio and adds 20$ material. So the Grand Total for S/H to California would be around 220$. What about coming to Vancouver, which is nice these days with all the construction going on for the Olympics 2010?

Thank you for viewing