Classic Hifi Care

Over the last 2 years I've been fortunate to receive a lot of nice and/or useful vintage electronic stuff from the Estate of my late 94 yr old Uncle, a 35 year EE at IBM who woked for Pratt & Whitney for 3 years prior to IBM. He was super-smart and worked on the iconic IBM System 360 and 370 among many projects over the years. He was a HAM radio and RC plane fan and also an audio buff who built a MacKit 30 amp to go with another Mc30, tuner + preamp, and rest of a system that included 2 1960 corner speaker kits from Cabinart that I've just finished repainting and a Garrard Type A.I got the speakers and TT, my cousin has the Mc stuff. My uncle also had a ton of test equipment and I got a few good things including Simpson 260 and a little Tek 310 o-scope (all-tube chassis).

Today I was at my cousin's house. He'd been cleaning out his own basement, which was just next door to my Uncle's house of the last 5 years. Before my cousin in moved there my uncle rented it out and kept some of his own stuff in that basement. Anyhow earlier today my cousin came across a box that ended up coming home with me, even a wood case for it that he also found. I suspect he used this with that single Mc30 amp before assembling a McIntosh stereo system. A cool find but there's something rather odd about it, which I'll go into shortly.

Anyhow all posts are useless w/o pics, so here's some of it, and 2 from eBay of 2 units that are fully assembled.

So this is a Fisher 50-R, about 1954-56. Up to about '53 Fisher concentrated strictly on packaged Hi-Fi consoles, but around then started to produce separates for the Hi-Fi "buff" crowd, this being one of the earliest, along with mono amplifiers and a 50-C preamp-control unit.

So what's odd about this 50-R? It seems to be a hybrid (?) of 50R and 70R, the latter which has 5 knobs and 1 more tube.
I'm unclear as to what the 5th knob or additional tube did, as the tuner is otherwise essentially the same.

Here's pic of the chassis and a Sams of the 50 R chassis from my uncle, then a pic of a 70R. A 50-R lacks the extra tube that's positioned sort of directly under the 6U5 "eye" tube, a unknown tube as the socket is empty. All of the other tube locations have their tube # stenciled on the chassis, but on mine the empty socket and 1 of the 6AL5s do not have an ID. This is clearly a 50-R given the 4 control knobs, but with an extra (unknown?) tube socket. Since otherwise the chassis was the same so maybe they just automatically included the unused socket on the production line?

There is a mystery here, since the Fisher website does not seem to have many pre-55 models, including this one.

I do not see the "civil defense" or Conelrad marks on the AM scale, those were on all MW/BC/AM radios made from 1953-63. I am unaware if there were exceptions for components rather than entire "radio sets".

Roger, would you like this topic moved to the Fisher board?

Sure... it was a "Find" but it's also a "Fisher", wasn't sure which was more appropriate.

Yes these were FIsher's earliest component tuners, the 70-R, which is virtually the same except for the noted details, is identical to the one used in their consoles (pic of Fisher console with 70-R). Both the 50-R and 70-R have Volume controls, thus some kind of preamp built in? They have a lot of tubes, numbering 13 or 14 depending on which model.

I moved this topic from "Finds". This will keep the Fisher discussions together.

Thanks! Our own Dave MM will be the new steward of this rare Fisher and the right one to bring this beauty back to life! My late Uncle would be very pleased.