Quote:
Originally Posted by Dubis7
I have this nagging idea that power transformer sets will take whatever wall voltage they receive and turn it into the voltage the set wants, but that's probably not true. I'm not sure where I got that idea from. Would converting it to accept American wall voltage be as easy as having a power transformer under the American specs produced and swapping it in, or are there more complexities?
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There are such things as constant voltage(also called saturable-reactor among other things) voltage transformers that can take a wide range of (sometimes fluctuating) input voltages and produce a steady output, but the only sets I know of them being used in are pre-Emerson-takeover Dumonts, and early Solid State sets (mostly Zeniths). Many European market radios had a tapped 240V input winding, and had a line voltage selector switch that would allow you to select the tap for your local line voltage (110,120,210, 240, etc), but I doubt an American made product would have that.
You can find (or have made) a proper power transformer for that set.
I wonder if the original design used a power transformer? Most portable sets tend to be transformerless Hot chassis designs. Most hot chassis used doublers for B+, and series string heaters. If it has two heater strings 240V operation is easy to achieve....Simply chop some parts from the doubler to make it a simple half wave rectifier, double up the filter caps, series pairs of any parallel heater chains with the same current, or add a dropping resistor to the chain.
Techs in various countries had lots of clever and stupid ways of making foreign sets work.....To definitively know for sure what work fixing it will entail, a comparison of it's present wiring to the schematic is in order.