Classic Hifi Care

This is a post to inform a potential buyer what is behind the cool looks of the receiver. Philco last made some cool AND powerful Consoles up to their 1960 models, after that it was one-chassis receivers with 2x6BQ5 or less if its a smaller model.

While the player is a VM 1200 series, it needed the usual cleaning and the idler pulley is good.
I needed to perform surgery on a Tetrad cartridge plug which is the only one that fits in the tiny headshell.
My least favorite soldering task by far!!! The chassis had a few electrolytics but all passed on my ESR tester. The controls were cleaned and separate speaker coupling caps were added to boost output. Both speaker negatives were connected to B- via a shared capacitor that tested good but seemed to be a cheap-out. The control panel looks unique and I just had to buy this to work on it but was I surprised to find a very low-power, germanium transistor equipped yet it was all USA-made. Performance was enhanced by using high-impedance speakers.

Nice looking but the receiver itself is evidently kind of a low power bean-counter special.

Firedome wrote: ↑Mon Nov 01, 2021 9:29 pm Nice looking but the receiver itself is evidently kind of a low power bean-counter special.

While it sounds OK to the common ear, maybe one that likes to crank it just a tiny bit on generally sweet sounds, but it was not up to playing my 60s-70s classic rock.

I think the bean counters were on top of this one, nobody as good as Philco went this cheap so fast but Motorola was a close second. Color TV was their "thing" by then, with few surviving examples.

At least Philco did not use lousy transistors like Silvertone, Airline and others as they went solid state.

looking at the output transformers and the transistor outputs , I would say 5 watts per channel ... looks like my budget RCA VTL17 that only uses a 3" tweeter and 6x9 woofers per channel

hermitcrab wrote: ↑Wed Nov 03, 2021 12:02 am looking at the output transformers and the transistor outputs , I would say 5 watts per channel ... looks like my budget RCA VTL17 that only uses a 3" tweeter and 6x9 woofers per channel

Funny but when I look up the transistors on the sams, it crosses to GE-2 standard replacement like NTE102, rated maximum collector dissipation 600 mW!!!

Ha! my bad.. I was looking at the pre-amp transistors with the heat sinks on them... but that is the output size on my cheapo RCA

Thanks for posting this as I've not seen the interiors of one of their SS models. A few have popped up on my searches but none close enough to pursue, yet. There are some labeled Philco Ford though I'm not sure if that would have been prior to or after this unit. I do like the face plate styling.

Mark