Did this person get hosed 60 years ago ?
 

Just found an old repair bill in one of the tube radios I recently got . In 1957 this person paid for all 4 tubes in the radio with the given reason "1 tube dead , other 3 tubes shorted" , which I gotta say I find highly unlikely that 3 battery type tubes would all turn up shorted all at once since the directly heated filament cathode is far less likely to short (classic heater to cathode short of the indirectly heated types) than the indirectly heated type would . In fact , what exactly COULD a directly heated tube's filament short out to while still being intact enough to function at all ? (and not be considered a "dead" tube rather than a "shorted" one)

$10.20 for parts ; 4 tubes , one .001mfd 600v cap , one two meg two watt resistor , & one dial pointer

$3.75 for labor

$13.95 which was no small chunk of change back in 1957 :eek:

PS , sorry for the sideways pic , my I phone wasn't playing nice today .....

$117.11 in today's dollars.

Good grief , that's even more than I'd have guessed !

PS , I do realize I messed up and put this in the for sale rather than the off topic chat area , and I've asked the Mods to move it there for me :)

I mean... I guess it's possible that resistor and/or cap could've fried and ruined all the tubes... but idk.

There's no model number but if it's the 8BX series RCA. the one with the aluminum case and bakelite sides, the radio was about $50.00 new, 10 years prior.
The tube compliment seems from the earliest model. The later ones used a 3V4 and a 1U5 instead of the 3Q4 and 1S5. I have both variations.
Many people would've spent $14.00 on a $50 dollar radio, where not so much on a $20 dollar radio.
I see there was no sales tax on the labor, just on the tubes and parts.

Tax on parts only is probably the norm. It was that way in Mass & they
would tax you for ANYTHING ! Thank God we dont have sales or income TX in N.H., just real estate, death & sin taxes. Oh & the first in US lottery too.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

Ever since the sales tax started in Wisconsin in 1962, labor, service calls and delivery charges were taxable, as well as the parts.

If somebody hosed up hooking up a battery, (B+ to the filament connections) it likely could take out all the tubes in a flash. 2M 2W resistor? Seems an odd value for that set.

I just looked the model # of the set, I remember! It's an RCA model 66BX.
The audio coupling capacitor is a .002 and not a .001 and I don't see a 2M 2W resistor used. It's only $0.60 worth of parts and if they weren't replaced, it's only petty larceny. The tubes are a different story and if the old ones were returned to the customer.
The long explanation of the service procedure stating realignment seems a little extreme.

I forgot to include that part. That radio used an A-B battery pack with a plug-in connection. Kind of hard to make a mistake in that regard!
Most radio owners wouldn't try to make a connection like that. :scratch2:

And it does not pass a sanity test... to dissipate 2W in a 2 meg resistor a voltage of 2000 Volts would be required.

jr

The schematic is in Riders 15. Didn't look over the schematic that carefully but I don't think there's a 2 meg resistor in it. :scratch2:
I was hanging out in a small TV repair shop in the summer of 1957 at the age of 12yo. I wanted a little exposure to the repair game. The guy that ran the place did the same thing, replacing tubes that didn't need replacing, etc.

I guess some things are timeless, just the objects change.

Exactly my thought when I saw that receipt . One bad tube and a missing dial pointer , sure . ALL the tubes in the set plus a couple other parts on top of that besides the dial pointer ? methinks the poor customer got , well , , Hosed .

The Plot Thickens !
 

So just for kicks I figured I'd inspect the radio the repair slip was found in . Come to find out , not only was the repair bill in there , so too were the tubes that had been replaced along with a capacitor that is presumably the one listed in the bill of repairs . The customer appears to have used masking tape to tape the old parts into the battery compartment . Problem is , there are NO "new" capacitors . I can find no evidence of soldering work on any of the capacitors that looks like it was done "after the fact" , ALL connections appear to be as built . I do see the 3Q4 appears gassy , but I intend to test the other three tubes paying special care to perform a through shorts test on all three .

PS , this customer hosing wasn't administered in Massachusetts , Massachusetts is just where the set ended up . The slip says "Danielson Conn." .....