Cossor Continued  

Shown left is a battery Cossor receiver model 238 from about 1937.  This set was designed for the home without mains electricity, requiring HT, GB and accumulators to provide power.  It can be seen that screen printed glass tuning scales have superseded the celluloid tuning scales from the early 1930’s, reception is provided on long wave and medium wave.  Very nice detailing is present around the perimeter of the speaker cloth, but that apart there is nothing remarkable about this receiver.  Valve line-up is 210VPT, 210SPT, 220HPT, and the receiver cost £5.12.6 (without batteries).

Shown left is the model 72 from about 1939.  Cossor have now bowed to the inevitable and the receiver uses a superhet circuit.  Obviously Cossor valves are utilised on the chassis, winding up with a 2XP output valve.  Notice that the output valve, rectifier and power supply components are on a separate chassis to the radio chassis.  This meant that the radio chassis was not as wide as it would otherwise have been, and so made it easy to use the same chassis components in both horizontal and vertical cabinet styles.  When used in the upright cabinet the radio chassis would be at the top of the cabinet, with the power and output chassis in the lower half of the cabinet.  This can be seen in the comparison between the model 72 and model 77, although these are not exactly the same chassis’s.  

Notice that the on/off switch is a toggle switch at the side of the cabinet in both cases.  For the 72 a wooden recess is created in the side of the cabinet, whereas in the upright model 77 a brass escutcheon provides the mounting for the on/off switch.  The only reason I can think of for separating the on/off switch from the volume (or tone) control is to enable the set to be switched on and hence warm up to a known volume level, but this seems a pretty weak rationale. Valve line-up for 72 is 41STH, MVSPENB, DDT, 2XP, 431U.  Line up for 77 is the same as for the 72, except that the output valve is a 2P, which could deliver only 2w output instead of 4w for the 2XP. I acquired this receiver with decades of dust on the chassis, and no sign of a single component ever having been changed.  The story of the restoration will appear elsewhere on the site sometime in 2003, suffice to say even though over 60 years old, it's still using the original paper electrolytics!

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